The redefinition of Malay womanhood in Yasmin Ahmad's films

By Mohani Niza

In 2004, 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
who has just graduated from secondary school 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 married; and in 2007, Mukhsin, the
prequel in the “Orked trilogy” which depicts Orked’s childhood in a sleepy Kuala
Selangor kampung (village).

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The character of Orked marks a departure from the typical heroines we usually see in
Malay cinema and television. Orked represents a refreshing take on what it means to be
a young Malay woman in Malaysia, a rapidly modernizing country which has to delicately
deal with globalization and also the paradox of a multi-racial society, which has not fully
recovered from the racial riots of May 13th 1969. As 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 Malaysian Certificate of Education results (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!”

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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”. 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 dolls and weddings, and instead cocoons
herself in her room reading books an asserts her right to play in the field with the village
boys. Thus Yasmin Ahmad presents gender roles as unimportant, the absence of which
thrive true love and strong character. She also shows the importance of one’s upbringing
in shaping one’s worldviews.

Furthermore, Yasmin Ahmad is unapologetic about showing a somewhat alternative way

in which Islam is practiced. Instead of portraying Orked’s liberal attitudes conflicting with
Islam, Yasmin Ahmad portrays how Islam can exist side by side with so-called “non-
Malay” lifestyles. In other words, there’s no singular way of being a Muslim. After all,
Islam is not static and devoid of external influences. 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 portrayed in

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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.

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But despite the conflicts Orked faces, she is 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 be crucial to examine the factors of class and ethnicity when examining Malay
womanhood.

All in all, through her “Orked trilogy”, Yasmin Ahmad has provided an interesting glimpse
of the multi-faceted nature of Malay womanhood. Depating from the typical
representations of women in Malaysian cinema and television, Yasmin Ahmad has
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.

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Reference

[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.