February 2, 2013
Malay Politics and Ramleeology
by Azly Rahman @ http://www.malaysiakini.com
"Alif-Mim-Nun-Wau sarkis!" pronounced a character in P Ramlee's film Pendekar Bujang Lapok.
Of late you have been hit by nostalgia, reminiscing as well as even romanticising a 60s, 70s as well as a early 80s before Mahathirism took root.
My last column upon Malaysia in a 70s was an enjoyable piece of journaling as well as from a numerous comments you read from all a blogs which carry it my own blog Between Cybernetics as well as Existentialism, my Facebook page, Malaysia Today, etc you feel which there was a time when a good Malaysian suggestion was about to be forged.
This was which clarity of a chronological block, until May 13, 1969 came, of course; whether it was orchestrated or a feat debate which went wrong you have been commencement to find out, as alternative accounts of it go upon to be written.
After languishing in sweet memories of a 70s, you subsequent thought of a 60s; a time when you was flourishing up in Johor Baru as well as how a kampong as well as a city as well as a school you went to became my "global classrooms".
My fond memories regularly go back to a "multicultural Malaysia you knew generally how you owed my seductiveness in guidance as well as insatiable titillate to acquire believe through a selfless work of my teachers Malay, Chinese, Indians, Sikhs, as well as even my Peace Corps American teachers.
Without them, you would not have been means to write honestly about a need not only to "tolerate" other cultures! though to learn from any a single of them, embrace a dynamics of each, as well as to bring out a universality of a values, as well as subsequent to pattern good guidance systems as well as environments which will maintain these differences into commonalities as well as to hybridise a knowledge you will acquire.
This is what has been not in in our education complement critical sensibility as well as a embracing of a thought of "cultural action for freedom", as a Brazilian tutorial reflective thinker Paulo Freire would say.
A P Ramlee movie
Of late, too, you have been watching P Ramlee movies reminiscing my 
childhood days as well with my memory of a black as well as white television, which "machine to call upon far divided vision" (tele + vision), or upon a more fanciful basis, anthropologists of record would call "a fantasy-machine in a garden" as well as in this case, a "TV in a pacific kampong".
I watched as well as "read closely" Malaysia's good humanist-social-philosopher P Ramlee's, classic of a 60s Pendekar Bujang Lapok. you found something interesting in there worthy, in fact, of a full-blown thesis upon a anthropology of a Malays. Here is what you detected about a initial seventeen mins of it:
There is an intellectual horizon in "reading" this movie; a single which could be a hybrid of political-economy of development as well as underdevelopment (see a work of a Dependenistas/Dependency Theorists of a 70s), World-Systems Theory, Marx's thought of "technological determinism", i.e. record as a shaper of amicable family of prolongation (see my thesis Thesis upon Cyberjaya, upon a start of Cyberjaya as well as a last contention upon Marx as well as record as well as culture), semiotics of power, as! in a th ought of "habitus" (see Pierre Bourdieu's work upon "symbolic power") as well as a study of post-colonialism emblematic in a work of Albert Memmi's Colonizer as well as a Colonized, Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks, as well as others in a genre of psychological studies of oppression.
Ramleeology as method
Syed Hussein Al Attas's work is additionally instructive of a horizon in looking during a thought of how a picture of a native is constructed, as lazy, obedient, as well as flushed with "bebalism" as well as "tolol-ism " (feudalistic Malay insanity as well as moronism); assembled by a rich as well as land-owning category which drew inspiration from "divide as well as rule" from a British colonials.
Indeed there is a lot to "read" in this movie; provided you deconstruct it to a minute item (dialogue, characterisation, symbolism, plot, sermon of power, denunciation play, irony, metaphor, etc.). Herein lies a rejuvenation of my seductiveness in developing "Ramleeology" as a "method of informative critique formed upon radical amicable theory which can be applied to a trajectoric landscape of history such as Malaysia of this 'hypermodern' era".
In only which seventeen opening minutes. you saw a complete history of a evolution of a feudal as well as neo-feudal Malay genius being displayed; from pre-independence to this day as you count a days to a regime change.
P Ramlee showed me what authoritarianism, stupefication, Malay gangsterism, wanton kampongism, corruption, as well as arrogance mean. These can be seen in today's display of political idiocy, as a bequest of Mahathirism.
But during a end of which "kampong jetty scene" of ! Pendekar Bujang Lapok, you saw "counter-hegemony" in a form of a revolt of a Malay rank as well as file opposite a oppressors, as if poetic probity must regularly be with a alienated as well as flustered Malays during opposite epochs of history.
The last "revolt scene", similar to a attack of a Bastille, as well as a overthrowing of Louis Capet as well as Marie Antoinette, you saw rallies upon rallies such as those you have been seeing in a last few years commencement from a initial Bersih rally.
The Malays these days, a enlightened ones, in collaboration with their brothers as well as sisters of opposite race, religion, national start have all become a brand new "pendekars" or "warriors" such a a 3 "pendekars" headed by P Ramlee.
But a last scene is not here yet. The deconstructionism mart is there; Malaysians have been means to "read" what has been delusioning them vis-a-viz a dread called "Mahathirism", a insanity called "Ketuanan Melayu", as well as a rhetoric called "social contract", framed according to a truncated Malay perspective as well as not similar to a prophesy referred to by a amicable reflective thinker of a French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
I had fun watching which particular P Ramlee movie. you consider he is a visionary, rather similar to a complicated Malay soothsayer vocalization up law to energy for Malaysians of all races, for a oppressed, for those dehumanised by those who owns a means, methods , machinery, as well as media record of oppression.
Watch a film upon YouTube - you Malaysians have been all in it!
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