Studying the drama “The Swordfish, then The Concubine” really gave a new dimension of thinking for me. Before this, I did watch and heard about famous Malay folktales but all of them were in Malay. For example, I watched the movie “Singapura Dilanggar Todak” before, and to my surprise, I did not expect it to be told in English! Reading the play made me think that it was not impossible to tell our Malay tales in other languages.
Looking at our culture nowadays, people’s minds are more closed in a sense that they are very old-fashioned in their thinking. For example, if a traditional Malay tale is filmed and the aesthetic value was changed even a little bit, there will surely be some critics that stands out and tries to defend the “Traditionalness” of the work. For me, these people are the barrier for our creativity. Yes, I do believe that we must have a certain guideline in producing our works, but sometimes there are people who are acting extreme in order to achieve their own ambitions, for example, their political ambitions.
Living in this land of the gifted, sometimes I felt that we live in a prison because there are some compulsory freedoms of the people are being denied. To blame anyone is not an option because everyone is innocent and everyone is also guilty, and why did I say that? Well, it is for you who read this blog to ponder on.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Regarding my friend’s blog, I kindly agreed with him saying that it is a new dimension of thinking when facing a Malay drama being told in English. The new version drama by Kee Thuan Chye gave me a new perspective of thinking about the original drama ‘Singapura Dilanggar Todak’. The funniest thing about this drama is the name of the important characters. For example, ‘Logod’. The writer changed the order of the name from ‘Dogol’ to ‘Logod’. The same goes to ‘Ris Kaw’ which is originally ‘Wak Sir’ in Malay tradition. I agreed with Faisal saying that because of some people that is narrow minded in thinking, the writer can established the different version of drama as long as it does not involve ‘The Traditionalness’ of Malay. I do agree that living in a nowadays life make me feel like being controlled and I am not free to voice out what I feel to public because freedom is denied by the people today onwards. What I like the most about this writer is that he could revise his drama according to the issues that is happening around him. That’s really amazing! I never found one like him before! It’s funny, but it’s true!
ReplyDelete