By Mohani Niza

In 2004, the late Yasmin Ahmad, famous for her Petronas advertisements depicting multi-racial Malaysia, released the movie Sepet (Slitty eyes), to much controversy and praise. It won a string of foreign film awards and a legion of fans local and abroad, but it was also lambasted by certain quarters who felt that the movie threatened the moral fabric of Malay/Muslim life in Malaysia by showing its Malay female protagonist “betray” her bangsa (race) by falling in love with a “kafir” (infidel) [1].

Sepet centers on the relationship between Orked (Sharifah Amani), a teenage Malay girl and recent secondary school graduate, and Jason (Choo Seong Ng), a Malaysian-Chinese pirated VCD peddler. This is followed up with Gubra (Anxiety) in 2006, which tells the life of an older Orked, now now married, and Mukhsin, the 2007 prequel in the “Orked trilogy” depicting Orked’s childhood in a sleepy Kuala Selangor kampung (village).

Orked marks a departure from the typical heroines we usually see in Malay cinema and television. She represents a refreshing take on what it means to be a young Malay woman in Malaysia which is a rapidly modernising country that has to delicately deal with globalisation and also the paradox of a multi-racial society – one which has not fully recovered from the racial riots of May 13th, 1969. As film critic Dr Khoo Gaik Cheng notes in her book Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature:

“Socio-economic forces, state-initiated, and the cultural development of the NEP years (National Economic Policy 1971-90) had produced a burgeoning discourse about subjectivity among the children of the NEP themselves: what is it like for urban Malay women and men to be both modern and Muslim?”.

 In his review of Mukhsin, Michael Sicinski writes that:

“… transnational feminist theorists would do well to examine Ahmad’s work, since like them, Mukhsin is about complexifying the world, deepening interconnections, delving into the messiness of the conundrums that women face, and moving outward, forging even more connections.”[2]

In Sepet, we are introduced to Orked, 17 years old and living in the mining town of Ipoh, patiently waiting for her end of secondary school examinations. She spends her free time indulging in her obsession of Japanese movie star Takeshi Kaneshiro, movies by Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai and reads up on a variety of intellectual works. She goes out with friends and does what girls her age usually enjoy. She is independent, free-spirited and unapologetically opinionated. In one scene with her best friend, she argues passionately about the racist legacy of colonialism, whereby Asians still fall in love with white people thinking that they are superior, yet as she quips “You like what you like lah!”

Even though she is still subjected to curfew and the occasional concern from her parents, Orked is largely let to be who she is. In fact, Orked’s parents themselves do not present themselves as “typical” Malays” (whatever that may be). They enjoy a very sexual life together, unabashed about their affections. In one endearing scene, clad in just sarongs, they dance together in their house to Thai music, while feeding each other fruits. Perhaps their “liberal” attitudes may explain Orked’s personality. We see this further in Mukhsin (2007). In one scene, a neighborhood girl teases young Orked about her father doing domestic chores, causing Orked to snap, “My dad helps in the kitchen because he loves my mother!.” Young Orked refuses to play with dolls and weddings, and instead cocoons herself in her room reading books and asserts her right to play in the field with the village boys. By doing this, Yasmin Ahmad presented gender roles as unimportant, the absence of which thrive true love and strong character. She also emphasised the importance of one’s upbringing in shaping one’s worldviews.

Furthermore, Yasmin Ahmad was unapologetic about showing a somewhat alternative way in which Islam is practiced. Instead of portraying Orked’s liberal attitudes as conflicting with Islam, Yasmin Ahmad portrayed how Islam can exist side by side with so-called “non-Malay” lifestyles. In other words, there is no singular way of being a Muslim. After all, Islam is not static and devoid of external influences. Dr Khoo notes that “‘Islam participates in modernity as a globalizing force as well” [3]. Orked gleefully indulges in her pop star obsessions as much as she willingly reads the Qur’an after Maghrib (evening) prayers. There is no dichotomy of good Malay woman/bad Malay woman usually that is portrayed in Malaysian cinema and television, whereby typically the female protagonist after indulging in “bad Western activities” (e.g. smoking, clubbing, fooling around sexually, dressing very scantily) ultimately repents tearfully on the prayer mat or gets punished by society – or both.

Yasmin Ahmad’s Orked is powerful. She defines for herself what her identity should be. She enters into a relationship with Jason, a young Malaysian-Chinese from a working-class background with all the passion and innocence of a 17 year old girl. A fellow Malay guy friend makes fun of their relationship and denounces her as a traitor to her race, yet she boldly fights back by saying that “For generations, Malay men have been marrying outside their race”, thus asserting her sexual right as a Malay woman to do the same. 

Ironically, she is almost raped by the guy’s best friend who is an outwardly respectable young Malay man adored by her parents. In Gubra (2006), we see Orked now married not to Jason but a Malay man who ultimately cheats on her. Orked’s husband, upon being discovered of his extramarital affair, tries to soothe Orked by saying that the other woman is stupid, and not worth bothering over as she means nothing to him. Orked retorts, “That’s the problem with you Malay men, you think women are stupid!”. This is both a powerful female assertion of her sexual rights and a scathing critique of Malay/Muslim patriarchy. Grief-stricken, Orked leaves her marriage.

But despite the conflicts Orked faces, she is not without class privilege. Her family speaks fluent English and employs a maid. Perhaps most strikingly, Orked possesses Malay/Bumiputra privilege. As Sepet unfolds, we see that Orked obtains a scholarship to study abroad, despite scoring just 5 A’s for her examinations, where else Jason scores 7 A’s but fails to get a scholarship and has to support himself by working illegally selling pirated VCDs. Thus, Yasmin Ahmad shows the contradiction Malay women in Malaysia face. On one hand, they have to battle the gender-roles imposed on them, and yet Bumiputra privileges mean that in some ways, they are able to sail through life. Thus, it is crucial to examine the factors of class and ethnicity when examining Malay womanhood.

All in all, through her “Orked trilogy”, Yasmin Ahmad provided an interesting glimpse of the multi-faceted nature of Malay womanhood. Departing from the typical representations of women in Malaysian cinema and television, Yasmin Ahmad managed to construct a different way of seeing young Malay women in Malaysia. Via her protagonist Orked, Yasmin Ahmad shows us the contradictory challenges faced by young Malay women and yet how they are wise in facing these contradictions, handling them with both intelligence and resilience.

References

[1] Al Amin, FAM 2008, ‘Controversies surrounding Malaysian independent female director Yasmin Ahmad’s first film Sepet’ in Proceedings of the 17th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, Melbourne, Australia, Monash University, pp. 1-12

[2] Sicinski, M 2008, Reviews of new releases seen, August 2008, The Academic Hack, viewed 10th April 2009.

 [3] Khoo, GC 2005, Reclaiming Adat: Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature, UBC Press, Vancouver.