Yasmin Ahmad is no stranger these days to the average urban Malaysian. As a matter of fact, she has managed to accomplish 'mucho mucho much' success and recognition abroad.
For all you art film virgins out there, she 'arrived' with a bang onto our screens, big, small, flat, round, with Sepet The Movie. The title was both insulting and discriminatory I thought. Growing up in Malaysia, I for one do NOT in any way find "sepet" and "keling" funny.
She also managed to aggravate my anger by pairing the female lead named after a flower with a Chinese pirate of sorts. Malaysians will be able to deduce swiftly that by pirate I mean 'illegal DVD representative' or more appropriately 'illegal DVD handler'. This again is discrimination cloaked in the veil of a pretty picture. The 'female' and her parents were English educated (shock shock, in the kampung some more) and hot hot Jason was a lowly DVD seller. With sepet eyes.
Well I'll say that if she intended to shock her audience, well done cos I sure was shocked that the world was proclaiming her a hero. I'm sure a lot of you are fans of her movies, but I find them boring. She never really pushes the boundaries of the unwritten Malaysian 'social code'. Sure it had an inter-racial plot, but what I perceived from the ending was that it was a lot easier to kill Jason off then to address the issue of inter-religious marriage.
*This anger was brought on by the above-mentioned film makers support of the BN candidate Shahrizat during the campaign period and also her proclamation that women in Malaysia are Free of Discrimination. My reply to Yasmin is "Spoken Like a True Man".
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