Celluloid nationhood: the imagined Malaysia in five recent local films

Abstract

Films are cultural texts. That is they relay cultural information about the place, people and culture of their origin. However, information relayed by the mass media is inherently second-hand information or experience, which means that it has been filtered, molded and recast into desired shape and form to suit the purpose of its communication. Consequently, experience or information gained through mass media has a strong tendency for such things as perpetuating stereotypes. For the audience, to indulge in any form of mass media means exposing oneself to a specific agenda driven narrative. That person is then faced with the choice of letting himself or herself be swept by the rhetoric, to sink in it or to swim against its current. This paper looks at four recent Malaysian films; Paloh, Spinning Gasing, Bukak Api, Momok and KL Menjerit. The object is to form a composite picture of what it means to be Malaysian based on the perspectives on Malaysia and the imagined Malaysian life as portrayed in these films. These films are chosen because they each discuss a separate aspect of Malaysian life and more importantly, some of them handle issues that are not often discussed openly. They humanize, characters that are often neglected in 'real' life. Using an adaptation of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and guided by the dialogic principle, this paper will seek to ascertain a cultural script of what it means to be Malaysian in the imagined world of these films.