Malaysiakini : Also, Zanās piece is one of his best pieces so far but I think people
really missed out on some of the issues he raised because, for some
people, it became all about how Malaysia is bad because people like Yeoh
cannot practice their trade here.
And really, if Pete Teoh wants
to talk about āskin crawlingā, I felt the exact same way when I saw his
music video, āHere in My Homeā directed by him, the late Yasmin Ahmad,
and another festival darling - Ho Yuhang.
āHere in My Homeā is as
much propaganda as āMalaysia Madaniā, but really this whole idea of
claiming Yeoh as one of us or dissing the establishment for making such
claims is missing the point.
Artistes all over the world gravitate
towards Hollywood or leave their homeland to peddle their trade in
foreign countries for various reasons.
Tsai Ming Liang sought greener pastures in Taiwan (and thereās a
reason for that) and good for him but it is not as if what he is
interested in would really find an audience in Malaysia and I say this
as someone who has seen some of his work.
Zan made an important
point ā āIt was difficult to get support from agencies like Finas and
whatnot. There were grants and funding opportunities, but we mainly saw
them being given to the mainstream players who were already making films
that were very profitable in the local marketā.
Should the state fund artistic endeavours?
One
of my favourite films of all time ā and I am not even going to qualify
it as āMalaysianā ā is āKaki Bakarā and it did not find an audience.
The film's theme of hubris and self-destructive behaviour struck a chord with this movie buff but that is another story.
āKaki Bakarā did not find an audience, like many films that Zan and his crew made back in the day.
I
am an outlier when it comes to the state funding art. Do not get me
wrong. I think arts and whatever passes for art adjacent should be a
part of an education policy.
But the idea that the state should
fund films or art of any kind is not something that I necessarily find
useful in cultivating an artistic ecosystem.
Also, there is a racial artistic ecosystem predicated on the subject
matter which is profitable and aimed at specific racial demographics.
To
cite an example, a couple of years back, a young Indian couple asked me
to hook them up with an Indian producer who not only makes local
content but also has connections with the Indian film industry.
So,
I set up the meeting and when it was over, they told me that he wasnāt
interested in the project because it did not conform to what he believed
were the expectations of the Indian community. And believe me, this
producer knew what he was talking about when it came to profit.
I
read the script, it was a Tamil and Malay language film that dealt with a
marginalised group of people who were labelled outcasts by the Malay
and Indian communities.
There is a happy ending to this story ā
funny because there was a literal happy ending in the script too ā
because the couple reworked the script so it dealt with immigrant
communities in Australia and sold it to an Australian production house
and are working on the film down under.
Keep in mind that the
āindependentā artistes ecosystem here is also a cosy group of people who
exists in a state of artistic mutual co-dependency, which is another
reason why some filmmakers and artistes leave this country and seek to
peddle their trade elsewhere, or at least this is what a few young
people have told me, who have left the country to pursue their celluloid
dreams abroad.
The
state is about a specific kind of propaganda. I get what Pakatan
Harapan is doing with its āMalaysia Madaniā idea but all the
institutions of the state are there to transmit a specific type of
propaganda no matter which coalition is in control.
In Malaysia,
where race and religion are not mutually exclusive, it gets much worse,
but this is a secondary problem to art in this country. Non-Malay
filmmakers are just as marginalised as those Malays who do not buy into
what the state is selling.
Art by definition is the dialectic
between individual liberties and societal stability. Artistes, by
definition, are supposed to be outsiders and those who are sanctioned by
the state are merely salespeople.
This is what the conversation is about or at least should be about.
Furthermore,
there is hypocrisy in this country, especially amongst the dominant
polity but not confined to them, which makes artistic endeavours even
more problematic.
All this nonsense about the movie āPulauā being
obscene is the kind of horse manure that plays well politically but does
not address real issues in this country.
Just look at the outrage over something like āPulauā and read the article by Emir Research titled āAddressing M'sia's 'premarital' children issueā and you will see the kind of hypocrisy at play here.
Furthermore,
the amount of homemade Malaysian porn that permeates the Malaysian
social media landscape makes the outrage over the film āPerempuan,
Isteri Danā¦ā look even more bizarre. Yes, I know my film references are
dated but you should get my meaning.
It is also about the control
of our language as well as religious interpretations. I say our language
because, like it or not, and believe it or not, all Malaysians
communicate in this language every single day.
We communicate in
Bahasa Malaysia not as some sort of patriotic impulse but rather because
this is the language that cuts through class and race.
Only
Malays who use the Malay language to further propagandistic ideas are
coddled by the state and of course, non-Malays who write about such
subjects are hounded like writer Uthaya Sankar SB.
Uthaya learnt
his lesson - āI always read about Islam, but I have learnt my lesson. I
will keep away from Islam and not write anything about Islam in the
future, that would be the best.ā
That is why art exploring such issues, especially when done by a Muslim, hardly gets sanctioned by the state.
The
main reason there has never been and will never be an authentic Bangsa
Malaysia is that the censorship by the state has made it impossible even
to discuss what it means to be Malaysian beyond political bromides and
propaganda.
When the state controls how people talk to each other, they define the people.
Forget
the noise, this is not about how local institutions are racist or about
people leaving this country and doing well overseas. This is really
about how the state attempts to define a country and people, and how art
is supposed to resist these attempts.
This is why profitable
films and artistes are easier to cultivate than people who have
something to say, even though they may not find anyone to listen to
them.
A late great Malaysian polymath who wrote poems that were
sacred and profane once told me, when it comes to art, āThaya, donāt
blame the system because the people are also the system. We get the art
we deserve.ā