So it's Merdeka again...

The humidity, the heat, the haze, we are thousands of miles away from all that.

credit: Zaiful

The cramped units of the cheap flats, the perilous hours on the roads; some of us have never seen that, some of us would rather forget.
But come the 31st, we raise our hands chant, 'Merdeka.'

Melbourne Gadoh premier: killing the 1Malaysia fantasy

I wouldn't call it a mixed crowd. I saw many familiar faces, the core group of student activists who inevitably were at every event anyway. Here and there were friends of friends, significant others and the odd Australian who was roped in to watch somehow.

It was a premier, of sorts, a Melbourne premier, for Gadoh, a Malaysian film from 2009. It's difficult to not think of the movie as cliched, and it probably avoided even greater obscurity by it's frank communal dialogue.

The muhibbah-ist that I am, I found little amusement in the strong language used against each other by the opposing races. Melayu and Cina lah. Cina pendatang, Melayu bodoh, Cina pengotor, Melayu malas are all too familiar taunts from my growing up in Kuala Lumpur trying to fit in between groups of friends of different backgrounds that even when used in comic situations, I cannot laugh.

Of course, we Malaysians don't hate each other that much. We love our food irrespective of its origin.

So it was over Nasi Lemak, post-movie, that the conversation turned to hate. 'Is there really that much tension between the races?' asked the innocent. The answers varied: "Yes" "There were fights everyday in school." "Not to that extent." "Not everywhere." The answers were as diluted as the teh tariks.

Very little evidence exists to suggest that Malaysia is a frank and honest-speaking country. Maybe behind closed doors with fellow conspirators we share, but out in the open we live in a constant shade of bland; vague and dull.

So why do we continually put up with the increasing levels of ineptitude, injustices, and unhappiness?

Is the fact that our splintering society still works for us today enough for us to continue to say 'It's still alright.'?

Maybe we need films like 'Gadoh' to jolt us awake, no matter how rudely, and make us realise the dysfunctional relationship we've been sharing for so long. The realisation does not come with a solution, but it can be the start of a process towards a real solution. It can be the spark that makes us want to know the strangers who've been around us for so long, and start to understand them.

Then, maybe, we can actually live with one another under the same roof.

The Cinematic Muslim

It's hard for muslims to find a flattering image of themselves in movies. I'm one of them, trust me, I know. The muslim (or Arab - it doesn't matter really) characters inevitably revolve around terrorists, people oppressed by terrorists, people who want to be terrorists, or people who don't want to be associated with terrorists.

There is some variety, but it just seems a little monotonous.

Human Nature #1-5

Zahirah ‘ZZ’ Zulkifly, our guest writer, spends a lot of time working in and out of student organisations.Currently MASS's sitting president, ZZ mines her experience to share with us some of her observations on ‘Human Nature’.

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Human nature #1: Where you come from can have a positive or negative effect on your personality. But usually, it's negative.

We all have friends who come from rural and city areas. Have you noticed that there can be significant differences between the two? Like it or not, location and surroundings influences the way we act and behave a lot.  An old Malay saying says, “masuk kandang kambing mengembek, masuk kandang kerbau, menguak” which simply means that you have to adapt yourself to the surroundings where you are. This might be the main reason people change as they move to a new location. How good or bad the changes are? It is up to the person’s tolerance to peer pressure as well as his or her principles. All you have to do is just remember, who you are, your roots and your purpose of being there.

Real roles for reel men

There has to be an end to the wimpy deadbeat male characters we see in movies today. But more importantly, there must have been a start, before which cinema actually portrayed responsible, respectable men.

Have audiences not tire of the many man-childs filling the screen? Shallow with the emotional maturity of 15 year-olds, for whom life seem to revolve around sports, videogames and bongs. The thought that film-makers are only producing characters like these because people are able to identify with them makes me worry too much about our young males that I simply refuse to believe it.