The Impartial

The onset of cinematic films being utilized for propaganda and mental conditioning, it seek us - the target audience - to grow some thinking caps

It’s the first time I took some time to watch 'Jangan Ambil Padang Kami', a 45-minute series aired on Astro Ria. As usual, my regimented-spending father never subscribed to Astro, I had a chance to watch it over the internet. I'm really not into television nowadays, yes, there's neelofas, tasha shillas and wawa zainals - pretty girls that excited us a bit amidst the inflation, crimes and corruption. But these actresses are no answer for my lust of satires based around real communities ( kemasyarakatan ). The archetypical of elite Malay conglomerate entangled in a power tussle plot really come to a saturation point, but nothing much to be done, they are the real money spinners.Incidently, I laid my eyes upon a 20second spot on JAPK on Ria and I began digging about it.  

The drama started out well, strong attributes of characters, attached with known idiosyncrasies for a gang of flat lots -  a northern-accented tomboy, a girl living with uninviting brother in law, a soccer star aspirant, a attention seeking wannabe, a school dropout bigger brother figure and a bunch of misfits,on first episode the adjacent field is gated with a large billboard announcing proposed condominium; so the kids rallied up effort to save the field from being mauled by das capitalist. I kept watching it. By second episode, we knew, the developer once lived within the blocks; the son lived there seek his way into the flats and do what Kevin Costner did in 'dancing with the wolves'. If injected with surprise twist, the kids would have kidnapped the son and demanded the cancellation of the project. But, as usual, we Malaysian are rich with sopan santun.The directors decided the quest to save the field a long and winding struggle, so be it. No hostage drama, just bad feeling in the mouth.  

Then, there is people kissing on the staircase, children being beaten the crap out and ran away to their neighboring block, irresponsible double parking made someone honking like mad. Never expect MILFs arguing with her son about who he should choose to marry, mothers in JAPK would tell her son to marry to somebody that doesn't burn a hole on fixed deposits for deity alone. 

JAPK irked me to question Astro intention of airing such drama? Who is brilliant enough to pitch such idea for Astro when their audience craved escapism Malay-conglomerate drama particularly with Lofas in thighs and leggings? The motivation of doing such cerita kemasyarakatan? It strike me that a minor state issue involving an athletic field in Kelana Jaya is in discussion of being handed over to a developer for a fee. 

Ah! ( FYI, Jangan Ambil Padang Kami loosely translates into Don't Take Our Field ) This must been the usual ploy, the satellite networkmimicking other media lapdogs are shamelessly professed in doing;  throwing support for current government and trashing the Malaysian mind to the lowest seabed. But fair indeed, my early observation gotten me salute Astro for playing ( if intended to ) it with  more grace and gusto than current media lapdogs. Jangan Ambil Padang Kami is discreet in its own way, even though the Kelana Jaya field acquisition bid is not a hotly debatable issue as water supply issue or UNISEL hostel management issue in Selangor. But, doing it this way - airing a once-a-week drama has a profound effect. Recreating a scenario of pulled privilege low-income people can paint the current local government in a bad manner. If I can recall, there was short lived Salam Pantai Timur during Mahathir era firing cynical shots at an Islamist party. Perhaps, Jangan Ambil Padang Kami might be a victim of appearing at the wrong time - as election  is looming just around the corner - such creative license can be skewed perceived with partisan politics 

A mirror of Malaysian tragedy 

Who lives in urban flats anyway? The ones that drives politicians crony around, needs a house, and declare a home in flats. The ones that tutor the ministers children around before they take their flight to study in the Western realm has their family under the roof of flats. The ones that cater ketua cawangan/ketua DUN food for their grand kenduri eventually stays in a flat.  In short, JAPK is the mirror of a Malaysian tragedy resulted in a vindicated pocket of society. They faced dangers of crime, watches faded opportunity in their face and finds it hard to tackle the enormous traffic jams of social mobility. 

The character Nik, 15 year old, a footballer aspirant seeking place into a sport school, was devastated for the usual field been acquired for development. In reality, he don't have to be that devastated. A taken over communal field is non issue, no sweat for Nik, but it’s the other factor widely familiar  in local football runnings. The absolutely power owns and manage the football governing body, making it impervious to change for a fear of murka. So, Nik had to bid farewell to his undying ambition and carry on with life less bound to feudal control. Juju dreams of being a celebrity? forget it - chubby minister children can gain insta-fame with their unlimited source of money and fat 'connections'. The bureaucratic red tape made rakyat marhaen complains had to swerve through 20-30 layers of pegawais, and before it reaches the power that can make significant change (which always gone to meetings) by half layers; momentum might have been gone. JAPK is a reflection of how powerless people had become due to the failing of our nation . In a nutshell, negara berkebajikan is not a bad idea after all. 

Suhan production, led by Rosyam Nor; a veteran actor knew his way to avoid the tricky path of impartial artistic expression. He might be brilliant to provoke minds into thinking one way- JAPK as a propagandistic drama - but in another way which had me reevaluate and personally re-categorize JAPK as a reflection of reality. Powers that previously seek themselves into position upon promises for better well being. A reality check for them. A warning about impending day which powers could bow and pray 'Jangan Ambil Kuasa Kami' for their failure to fulfill promises or in other words - janji dicapati. One way or another to look it, JAPK is totally a light hearted old school tale. It reminds me karangan lower primary school, usually about an unscrupulous kilang that releases toxic dump into the river, we drafted a protest letter to Jabatan Alam Sekitar for their swift action. But the age of innocence is long over. We could say any Jabatan is looking for 'willing' giver to kau-tim. The seven kids in Jangan Ambik Padang Kami is a brave but borderline in vain. 

For the scriptwriters and producers, kudos for being impartial and remained fixated to fundamental issues of urban residential characteristics and public responses. The casts had done a good job, it seem the drama had no script, very casual ( bersahaja ) dialogue - fitting a flat scenario rather than a Malay-conglomerate meeting room power tussle. This may be the last ever fictional depiction of Kuala Lumpur urban housing dwellers. As we are aware, Kuala Lumpur is devoured alive by foreigners, there is no next generation of the present generation KLites. JAPK is a relic for our grandchildren of how locals lost everything within the concrete jungle. While politicians? they don’t even care, their retirement home and grave well is outside of this jinxed land of Malaysia.  

The Hijacking

It takes loads of maturity and emotional intelligence in dealing with matters that had been heavily hijacked and tipped against your favor  

a brick of soap, a hijack story

The not so long penerangan gaffe had netizen all riled up upon seeing the nation 55th independence slogan entitled 'janji ditepati' ( promises fulfilled ), to emphatically remain impartial uttering those words, is hardly possible. Picture this, lay a fish on the floor, within the same room, set a cataract infected cat and watch its claws landed on what smelled as fish - in this case, janji ditepati is beyond fishy -in a myriad of ways to sniff at it janji ditepati is obvious propaganda and desperate mental conditioning of epic proportion. This prompted the minister responsible for penerangan to respond - no, preached - the masses ' to any closed mind, things may looked bad'. I suspected this minister smell nerve may had been misaligned somewhere between the brain grey matter. 

Alas, together with hyper inflated hari raya ever witnessed, makes the national day celebration that doesn't genuinely ever belonged to us, in every possibly way you are trying to swallow it, the propagandistic flavors is too fermented . Janji ditepati is just too much. Previous national day slogan were a successive message of patriotism, words of encouragement or calls for unity. Until 2012 when penerangan had broke the monotony and hijack it for its vested agenda. Trolling further, a song is released to further micro-mould the Malaysian mind that we owes the incumbent government for the wealth, success and peaceful nature of the nation. A plagiarized theme song teaches us a lesson that democracy runs the Japanese bathhouse-way of  'you rub my back - I rub your back'   

As steams hisses and pours, penerangan refuses to drop janji ditetapi slogan and relentlessly kept convincing the rakyat should reconsider their perspective. Amongst the song catch phrase 'janji sudah ditetapi, kini masa balas budi' ( Promises had been fulfilled, now its your turn to … ) had left the opposition laughing on the saliva-savings upon the obvious intention of penerangan to lembu-nized the rakyat into their democracy-defying schema. Penerangan had been suckered into scoring its own goal. Together with allegations that the song presented a uncanny resemblance of an Indonesian Christian song stung penerangan so badly, espescially upon the Utusan Melayu audience; an audience which the daily loves to bombard with the Christening of Malaysia phobia. Before wrapping up, the 'janji ditetapi' gaffe will forever be a fine example to reckon how cheaply the strategies penerangan had employed to win peoples heart. Most importantly, it’s a tale of delirious attempt to hijack national day. 

Brick-of-soap 

A direct seller walks up to you to sell a brick of soap. Asked what are the benefits, the seller struggles to answer much of it. But automagically turns adrenaline driven in telling you it’s a muslim based product, made with halal precursor chemicals and in compliance with hardly heard ultra-stringent Islamic manufacturing procedure. It comes with steeper pricetag. Would the 'Islamic soap' create a critical imbalance in the decision to purchase over the conventional soap? For unsuspected mind, yes, a religion is beyond question - but, in the dog days of penny pinching and desperate ( both seller and potential buyer ), saying no is tempting - and believe me, a self proclaimed agent of God-backed product can call you 'bakhil, kedekut' or 'unislamic' 

Say, our government runs on Islamic platform. By then, choses the motto "Hanya Parti Islam Pilihan Umat Merdeka" ( Only Islamic Party The Choice of Independent Soul ) for the 55th national-day, we would be walking in a different thorny grounds anyway. If 'janji ditetapi' is a clear cut uncivilized hijacking of merdeka celebration the situation above is complete opposite to justify hijacking of Islam. An Islam-based slogan, doesn't matter it’s a creation of mortal minds prone to error - has its merit, amongst its followers, who prepare to defend it on the street, even through forums . Religion hijack job is a double edged sabre, it worked both ways - including scarring those Muslims by birth and by right and non believers. We've seen it - youngsters claiming they are in right path preaching others to do things the right way, right way meaning their way - dress, act, talk and eat their way, prompting a question amongst the existing muslim " do we dress our religion heavily to qualify for one?" 

God team

For God backed team is invincible after all- those who fight for religion causes shall remain fearless and God himself shall protect them, A free haired female economist trying to formulate Muslims out of their financial deficiencies, a wine drinking geo-chemist that worked with NASA analyzing the greatness of God on Martian tectonics and a moral police that patrol Facebook walls to remind people that leggings is haram, in harshest and offensive manner - each doing their bid, but which ones is right?. A whole load 73 of them before the end of time, with a fraction sees the right path to be purist, true to the days of prophet; another chooses the middle path and another progressively seek reinterpretation of Holy Quran -  all doesn't mix all that well. With all these ruckuses, a young person tended to steer off the crowd, do whatever necessary, and keep silent only to be brushed off for being 'ignorant'. God is fair, and a role model is never too far and too hard to reprise, the prophet is a fine example. Even the prophet exemplary are being filtered to fit and justify a certain way. Again, felt to jump out of the cycle only to be shoved in over again. 

Again; who could argue with the self proclaimed God team? Islam is ad-din and applied everywhere, never try to separate religion with daily life strings by strings - you're a secular! worst, you're a kafir! 

In all fairness, it’s a slippery zone to get encapsulated in. To say no to the more islamic brick-of-soap. You reject the soap, you reject Islam. Hijacking can happen in all forms that perplexed us in many ways. National-day for votes in the case of janji ditepati. Religion for political power. Education for wealth gains. Whatever it may be, it’s a crazy world out there.  

The Gloomy Reality

What constitute to a successful Hari Raya? Is it the food? Baju raya? Duit Raya? or have Hari Raya robbed us and failed us big time?

Aidilfitri in the last few years is becoming much  lesser expected. In contrast, it was the best thing in life to anticipate. At time when i was a little boy, tirelessly running around the house and crash-sitting near my mother, panting, as she irons out and hung the new cloths in the wardrobe. I was doing projected accounting, anticipating how much I would accumulate duit raya from pak long, pak ngah, pak ciks and whole other uncles from both mother and father sides. A high probability of additional duit rayas through visiting clients or businessman as they come by my house ( through the time when my father act as branch manager at now defunct Bank Bumiputra ), uh oh, hampers, loads of hampers that we had to dedicate a whole room for hamper back in those days.  

What causes anticipation to dampen heat of Hari Raya this time? Its a dreaded situation to witness as you realized that everything comes with a (overinflated ) price tag. In the wake of gloomy job prospect, house price that aggregately takes 10 years clean salaries and mostly ever-shrinking goal post for striking a wedding date; aidilfitri celebration would have downscaled for my generation and the next generation to come. 

To participate and to outsize the previous hari raya is hurting the wallet and just a matter of ego polishing of the Malay idiosyncrasies  of 'bigger is better' that persisted since the age of Tok Kadok.  And like everyone, which had not being born into this world as badan kebajikan, opportunist suck us bone dry in name of Hari Raya; baju kurung tailor, kuih raya baker and meat butcher,with a similar tone successfully persuaded us that prices has gone up, and buying them is a necessity to show some celebratory respect marking the end of ramadhan. Come Syawal, a call for victory against mortal desire, we may just fall back into the hands of enemy we were trying to stave off  

Piece of monies

I cannot fathom the idea that Aidilfitri is vastly becoming a exposition of material prestige. A ceremony targeted for rapid commercialization that far eclipse its once collectively understood occasion for family reunion joy and long nights of ketupat preparation. On a side note, commercialization is a disease which had long necrotized Chrismas celebration in the West. The half month bonus (correct me if im wrong ) for government servant that CUEPACS succeeded to teat-squeeze from the nation coffers is just timely ahead of election. You know, the power-that-be cannot afford to say no, when nation accounting department justified it’s a definitive no. 

Having their ears hearing the rumbles of the ground, the business people had long sets their eyes on these bonus monies - they concluded that its natural for them to have a fair share, jack up the price to make it trickle down to their pockets. Private sector where my father work? they had not gained much, private companies are all about cut costs and efficiency, to find that holy grail of efficiency, they might sponsor a scientific study of maximum work load a person can do before passing out - out of their liability . Thus, Hari Raya actually drains the financial resources that never gained a notch throughout the month of Ramadhan. Primary concern regarding my father approaching retirement in coming months had bugged me to think what kind of Hari Raya would in years to come?  

Ziarah (visiting)  is one routinely done during aidilfitri but imagine those with low salaries counting their coins and calculate the mileage every liter of petrol could bring - plagued by worrying the car might have stalled mid-way through the journey. The toll discount offers wouldn’t be much of a blessing, when more tolls are popping up next to one existing. Malaysian gambled a lot in terms of penny pinching, large families would be fitted inside a sedan, almost asphalt kissing overloaded sedans scattered the highways. Thus, its a ticking time bomb when for a country that does not have a scraping programs and reliable car costs four years of untouched graduates salary. 

Meat, kerisik and santan - all essentials for rendang, is either downsized or replaced with other economically viable food like laksa. Perhaps, Aidilfitri these days gravitate towards facebook and twitter exposition, to see whose got the shiniest 2K colour baju raya or whose got the cutest siblings. Technology can intervene in many ways; almost everybody saw it coming, if anybody recalls the days of Nokia 3310, the then youngster tentatively remain buried in the sofa sharing the ringtone composition code of the blaring monophonic speaker; today, a child would smirk at the smell of kerosene from a pelita, and remained euthanized by the effects of swiping their fingers on tablet computers.

Trimming Down   

Its well understood, as we crept into the realm of competitiveness, Hari Raya celebration shall brace for downscaling. Just get what we can afford or if you don't love it, do not celebrate at all, just enough with little well wishing and ampun maaf, like we always do in other aspect of life: ala kadar. We should begin to plant the seed of subculture which adaptively shed the need for nostalgias and tone down celebrations like Hari Raya to a day or two and then its back to work. Accept it, its getting costlier. This shall be known on to our children and down the history books where the Malays are those who used to slug out seven days and seven nights to party like a rockstar for occasions like kenduri kahwin and hari raya.    

On a last note, I hope the seniors would be much more understanding in dire situations and the screwed-up generation that we belonged. We are the generation that might popped up in the wrong place; Malaysia as a country trapped in middle income crisis and its national capital being run by Myanmar and Bangladeshis - worst, wrong time, when population had perched over 7 billion level. We are the generation which bosses/employer are laughing out loud at job seekers that kept asking for more ( alas , its prostitutes trademark to basically 'asks for more' ), so please, seniors, do avoid asking what work we are doing ( as most graduates too hop so many jobs and remain unemployed ) and laugh a little lesser when you lectured us that rezeki would flow like piped water as soon as we got married - we do listen, we got nothing but time to listen, but these days, actions, cannot be more earth shattering when you are broke, jobless and limping our way out of the mess. 

The mess who created? It would be another topic to begin with, but for now, we shall begin enthuastically try to wrap our head around the idea 'to earn more, we need to work hard', lets see if working hard really rewards us in Malaysia.