Sedih Sampai Buta Blindness, Modernity and Tradition in Malay ﬁlms of the 1950S and 1960S

TIMOTHY P. BARNARD Sedih sampai buta Blindness, modernity and tradition in Malay ﬁlms of the 1950s and 1960s

In the 1962 film Ibu mertuaku (My mother-in-law) writer-director-actor P. Ramlee presents a horrifying tale of a married couple whose happiness is destroyed through the machinations of an arrogant parent.1 Ramlee plays Kassim Selamat, a musician who falls in love with, and marries, Sabariah (played by Sarimah), a Singaporean Malay who has lived a comfortable life in a luxurious home with all of the accoutrements of a modern lifestyle. Her mother (Nyonya Mansur, played by Nak Dara), however, disowns her daughter on her wedding day for marrying a musician. The honeymoon- ers move to Penang, where they live in a rented room underneath a house (traditional Malay houses are built on stilts), having become poor due to the wife’s request that Kassim give up his music career. When Sabariah becomes pregnant, Nyonya Mansur invites her back to Singapore for the birth. Nyonya Mansur eventually sends a telegram to Kassim claiming that Sabariah and the child died during childbirth. When Sabariah fails to hear from her husband – Nyonya Mansur has intercepted the letters Sabariah sends – she believes that Kassim has abandoned her. In Penang Kassim is so distraught at the news of the death of his wife and son that he becomes catatonic for several months. His sadness leaves him blind, and not for the last time in the film. During the golden age of Malay cinema, lasting from the late 1940s until 1965, over 250 films were made. These films remain popular in Malay com- munities in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia due to their con- tinual appearance on local television and at market stalls. Most of the films

1 I would like to thank Jan van der Putten and Ryan Bishop, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their advice and help. Any mistakes, of course, are my own.

TIMOTHY P. BARNARD received his PhD degree from the University of Hawai’i and is currently Associate Professor in the Department of History, National University of Singapore. Specializing in Malay society and history, he is the author of Contesting Malayness; Malay identity across boundaries, Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004, and Multiple centres of authority; Society and environment in Siak and eastern Sumatra, 1674-1827, Leiden: KITLV, 2003. Professor Barnard may be reached at the Department of History, National University of Singapore, 11 Arts Link, Singapore 117570. E-mail: .

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fit into one of four broad categories: comedy, horror, tragic love story, and legendary/historic tale. While the use of blindness as a plot device is fairly melodramatic, it was relatively common in tragic love stories, appearing in at least 12 films over a 14-year period. The underlying theme of these films is that Malays are facing a threat to their traditional lifestyles, as exemplified by an idealized depiction of the communal sharing and cooperation of the kampung (village), over against the individualistic, and ultimately demeaning, lifestyle of the modernizing city, usually Singapore. The explicit break with tradition and the past – which is the essence of modernity – is often treated in these films as a binary battle between past and present. Blindness thus acts as a metaphor for the distance between traditions and modernity, the kampung and the city. Such a dichotomy, however, was difficult to maintain. The city was enticing, with the technology and opportunities that modernity represented, not the least of which included cinema itself, delivering images of modernization to rural areas. Thus, blindness came to represent not only the dichotomy but also the ambivalence toward attempts to meld the traditional and the modern. In this article, I examine the origins of blindness as a metaphor in Malay films of the 1950s and 1960s, how it was used in these films, how the motif changed over time, and how this can be used to gain a better understanding of the forces of modernity and tradition in a rapidly changing society in Southeast Asia during the period in which the films were made. However, in order to understand these various influences, a closer examination of the context in which these films were made is required. Thus, this article begins with a discussion of the major Malay film producers of the period and the city in which they worked, Singapore.

Blindness and the city

While blindness is a common metaphor in many Malay films of the 1950s and 1960s, in each of these films it is the lifestyle of Malays living in a modern urban environment that triggers the responses of the various characters in the film. The blind person usually reacts against a binary gulf that exists between the kampung and the city. In most of these films, Singapore acts as the metaphor for modernity, a foreign city filled with Malays who are acting in new and unfamiliar ways. This is a role that Singapore had played in the Malay world for over a century. Singapore was outside of the strictures of traditional Malay states as well as being the focus of British industrial and technological infrastructure. In this vein, Singapore was also the centre of the Malay film community in the 1950s, since it was where the two major film production studios were located. Chinese businessmen founded the Shaw Brothers’ Malay Film Productions

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and Cathay Keris in the late 1940s and early 1950s respectively in an attempt to appeal to Malay-speaking customers in Singapore and Malaya by developing a profitable product for their cinemas.2 During this early phase, Indian nationals wrote and directed the vast majority of Malay productions through contracts with the Chinese businessmen who owned the studios. The plots of these films were often based on Indian tales. During this period, Malays were only found in front of the camera, as they acted out scenes their Indian and Chinese colleagues thought would be popular with audiences. Despite their limited role, members of the Malay cultural intelligentsia often worked as translators of scripts or as assistants behind the camera. By the mid-1950s, as Malaya was moving toward decolonization, there was a concerted attempt on behalf of the Malay talent onscreen and the intellectuals behind the scenes to gain control over the filmmaking process. One of the leaders in this move- ment was P. Ramlee, who broke several barriers when he directed and wrote, as well as starred in, Penarek beca (The trishaw driver) in 1955. While the production of Penarek beca is often cited in studies on Malay film as a key development (Uhde and Uhde 2000:13), the plot of most Malay films, which had developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s and revolved around a binary opposition between the city and the village, remained (Barnard and Barnard 2002). The same is also true for the sub-theme of blindness as a metaphor for the difficulties in dealing with a modern world. Another constant in Malay film was the use of the city of Singapore as a backdrop, which is not surprising since the films were made there. However, the importance of Singapore to the Malay psyche and modernization can also be related to the era in which the films were made. In the 1950s Singapore was the intellectual and technological centre of Malaya. While Kuala Lumpur would be named the future federal capital, Singapore was the most modern city in the region, and a focus for fervent Malay intellectual activity since it was outside many of the restrictions that the colonial government had imposed due to a communist ‘Emergency’ in the Peninsula (Hooker 2000:182- 8; Harper 1999:302-6). Among the Malay intelligentsia one of the most important organizations was Angkatan Sasterawan 50 (ASAS 50, Generation of the Writers of the 1950s), which originated from the journalistic community. Its members saw themselves as revolutionaries promoting modernity not only through their newspaper articles and editorials, but also through their short

2 In the Malayan market of the 1950s, Indians and Chinese exclusively viewed films from their cultural homelands, while ‘Malays and Chinese’ attended Malay language pictures. Letter, Lionel Gate, Rank Screen Services (1 September 1958), Loke Wan Tho Private Records [Letter written by Lim Keng Hor], National Archives of Singapore (NA 216). However, horror films attracted a wider audience. Pontianak (Vampire, 1957) was one of the most popular Malay films of all time, and the initial audience was made up of 60 per cent Malays, 30 per cent Chinese, and 10 per cent Indians, according to one estimate (Hamzah Hussin 1998:41).

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stories and poetry. Their critique of British rule and modernization, as well as of ‘feudalistic’ elements of Malay society, resulted in a period of artistic renais- sance among urban-based Malays. While their early activities focused around language and nationalism, the ultimate goal of many of these activists was the development of a modern society, one that rejected ‘old traditions’ (a common refrain in many of their writings). The Singapore where the members of ASAS 50 lived, wrote and performed was a vibrant port city in which Malay film was one of the primary avenues for reaching out to the masses, and in many respects represented this modernity (Keris Mas 2004). The connection between filmmakers and ASAS 50 was not a superficial one. Many of the future directors, screenwriters, and stars of Malay films of the 1950s and 1960s first came to Singapore as journalists and were present at the founding of ASAS 50. Such important writers as Jamil Sulong and Hamzah Hussin, as well as S. Roomai Noor – an early heartthrob in the genre – trans- ferred their early association with the literary organization to the new world of film. As filmmakers, they believed that they had important roles as social activists, which they translated to the plots and images in their films (Barnard and Barnard 2002:11; Jamil Sulong 1990:24). In addition to figures such as Jamil and Hamzah, there was also the most popular star of the period, P. Ramlee. Many of Ramlee’s public statements echo the goals of ASAS 50, particularly in his attempts to comment on modernization in Malay society. The connection between Ramlee and ASAS 50 went deeper than mere public statements. The Malay intelligentsia interacted with the film star on a daily basis. Ramlee published his own film magazine, Bintang (Star), which shared an office building with ASAS 50. The connection was even stronger since the editor of Bintang, Fatimah Murad, was also the wife of Asraf, the leading ideologue of ASAS 50 (Harding and Ahmad Sarji 2002:102-3). This relationship became even clearer once Malays gained greater control over filmmaking in the late 1950s. While Singapore offered possibilities for the Malay intellectual of the 1950s, it was also a city that was quite foreign. Singapore was Chinese dominated, which would have seemed alienating to the majority of Malay participants in the film industry, many of whom had grown up in small villages and had uprooted themselves to search for jobs.3 Many of the members of the Malay film community felt ambivalent about their dependence on the vibrant city of Singapore, and its technology. The city was a dangerous place where one could be taken advantage of, where interaction with your neighbours and new

3 This is particularly true in the early period of Malay ﬁlm production. Exemplifying this trend are Siput Sarawak, Maria Menado, and S. Roomai Noor, three of the biggest stars of the era, who were born in, respectively, Sarawak, Sulawesi, and Pahang. They all came to Singapore during the Japanese occupation, or shortly thereafter. Stars that rose in the late 1950s or early 1960s were more likely to have been born and raised in Singapore, such as Saloma and Mat Sentul. For short biographies of these individuals, see Ahmad Sarji 1999.

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housing practices made it difficult to maintain adat (customary) practices. In contrast, the village was romanticized as the site of all that was worthy of pre- servation in Malay culture, often in opposition to life in the city (Barnard 2004). In addition, film played a role in reinforcing the Malay stereotypes of many of its viewers. Since the primary reason for the development of the art form was to appeal to an audience who would buy tickets, plots that focus on a nostalgia for village life would be popular among urban-based Malays, while villagers, who would view the films as they were projected on sheets from the back of a truck brought around periodically to the villages, would have their lifestyle validated by a new technology. While reinforcing their lifestyles at the level of content, the form, medium and objects within the film undermined that very lifestyle. These films carried multiple and often self-contradictory messages, regardless of authorial intent. Thus, the city and its role in the development of the Malay film industry can be understood as an important factor in the development of how Malays understood the rapidly modernizing world around them. It created such ambivalence that it was often glorified as a place of possibility, while also presented in binary opposition to an idealized traditional Malay culture that was focused around kampung life and communal values. In Malay films blindness acts as an allegory to represent many of these feelings. It became a contradictory discourse among many at that time. While this is not surprising in a medium in which literary figures, the technology of the city, and rapid decolonization and modernization were taking place, the origin of the motif also points to another phenomenon in Malay film, the role of other cinematic traditions and the Japanese occupation.

Blindness and ‘border crossings’

Blindness is not a motif in traditional Malay literature. In chronicles, epic poems, and oral tales that were common in the pre-modern Malay world, handicaps or illnesses befell a character who had violated societal norms. Characters that did commit a cultural faux pas usually contracted a skin disease or had to wander through the forest in search of a new home.4 The change in how illness is used as metaphor, and how blindness is mainly limited as a trope to Malay ﬁlms that focus on modern issues, is perhaps best seen in the 1959 ﬁlm Sumpah orang minyak (Curse of the oily man), which is based on traditional Malay folklore. The main character, Si Bongkok, once again played by P. Ramlee, is a marginalized member of his village due to a

4 For example, in the Sejarah Melayu young women who slept with the prince prior to his acceptance of the basic social contract of governance died of a horrible skin disease (Brown 1970:15). In the Hikayat Siak (1992:112), one of the men who murdered Sultan Mahmud had grass painfully grow out of a wound since he had done the unthinkable by assassinating the ruler.

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skin disease. He eventually makes a deal with the devil to transform his hor- rific countenance into that of a handsome man, but Si Bongkok must rape a certain number of women as an oil-covered monster in compensation for the deal. This character is not blind, but suffers a skin disease. In addition, the film takes place in 1901 and contains no references to a modernizing world outside of the village. The absence of the motif of blindness in other genres of Malay film is emphasized further in Bidasari (1965), which is based on a traditional legend. In the film a princess has been cursed, and can only live as a human if a magical fish is kept in water. An evil princess, jealous of Bidasari’s beauty and obsessed with replacing the magical heroine in the eyes of a handsome visitor, takes two flaming torches and pushes them into Bidasari’s eyes. This has no effect, and Bidasari does not go blind. Blindness (buta) can only come from the melan- choly (sedih) of a character who realizes the emptiness of a modern world. If blindness cannot be found in traditional Malay literature, and is actually resisted in cinematic versions of these tales – with Nilam (1949) being the one exception to the rule – perhaps the allegory of lost sight originates in other cinemas that have influenced Malay filmmaking. In a recent study on the development of Malaysian national cinema, William van der Heide (2002) places particular emphasis on how ‘national cinemas’ draw upon a variety of themes and techniques that have been developed in other soci- eties, which are then localized in a process he refers to as ‘border crossings’. Such phenomena can be seen with the use of blindness as a trope in Malay films that discuss the perils of tradition and modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to the heyday of Malay filmmaking, cinemas in the Malay Peninsula and Singapore were dominated by American and particularly by British films. One of the most influential filmmakers of the pre-war period was Charlie Chaplin, whose film City lights (1931) featured the tale of a blind girl who is the object of affection for the Chaplin tramp. Although it is tempting to cite Chaplin as having originated this plot device, it is difficult to assess how important Chaplin was for the Indian and Malay filmmakers who wrote the screenplays for early Malay films. In this respect, the ‘border crossing’ is perhaps complicated further by another influential national cinema that most of the key figures in Malay film commonly cite, the Japanese cinema. While British and American films were commonly shown in cinemas in Malaya in the 1930s, prominent members of the Malay film community invariably refer to the influence that Japanese cinema had on their approaches to cinematic techniques and plot development. For example, P. Ramlee fre- quently mentioned that he was an admirer of Akira Kurosawa, while Hussein Haniff made a Malay version of the influential director’s Throne of blood, titled Istana berdarah (1964).5 In his memoir on working in the Malay film industry,

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Hamzah Hussin, a screenwriter from the period, mentions that several popular Japanese films shown during the Occupation used blindness as a basic plot device. According to Hamzah Hussin (1998:14, 18), one of the most popular films, not ‘propaganda’, of the period was Tokyo symphony. The film he means to refer to is most likely Tokyo rhapsody, a 1936 Toho film that is best known for having Akira Kurosawa work as its third assistant director. The film was a sensation in Japan, and its theme is still commonly used to instil a sense of nostalgia in Japanese audiences. Hamzah describes the film as dealing with ‘human’ and ‘humanitarian’ issues. He also believes that it was influenced by City lights since it tells the tale of a blind girl who regains her eyesight (‘celik’), only to realize that the world is not as beautiful as she had imagined. While the presence of a blind character in influential American and Japanese cinematic exports to Malaya may be the origin of the motif, it did appear during a period when Malay-language filmmakers were searching for a way to express their ambivalence toward the rapidly modernizing world around them. While Chaplin’s blind girl helps him realize various injustices in the world, the character in Tokyo rhapsody has more similarities with the blind characters in Malay film, since she regains her eyesight only to realize the horrors of a modern world. Malay filmmakers adapted, or localized, this motif in their films in order to convey many of the problems they perceived in the world around them. However, the motif was not stagnant; it developed over time as a form of expression in Malay film, particularly for those participants who embraced the ideals of ASAS 50.

Imitation and ‘moral anxiety’

Malay film became a source of vibrant stories shortly after the end of World War Two. Prior to the mid-1950s Shaw Brothers’ Malay Film Production (MFP) was the only viable producer of films, and the early style – plots, design, mise en scène – of these films played an influential role in setting the tone for the industry. Among the earliest films produced was Nilam (1949), a film that contains a series of fairy tales set in a kingdom on Java. In one of the tales a blind man regains his eyesight. In addition to containing the motif of a blind person regaining their eyesight, the film also stars P. Ramlee in a supporting role. Ramlee was originally recruited to work for MFP as a musician and singer. His charisma, as well as the prominent role of music in Malay film,

5 Throne of blood, of course, was also a Japanese remake of Macbeth. Ramlee had a working knowledge of the Japanese language, which is cited in several biographies as well as by the certiﬁcates displayed at his birthplace, now a national monument, in Penang. In addition, one scholar speculates that certain Malay ﬁlm techniques were direct copies of those seen in Japanese cinema (White 1996).

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pushed him in front of the camera. By the early 1950s he was a matinée idol and he would become the most popular and influential Malay film performer in history, eventually becoming a director, screenwriter, performer, and music composer for the films in which he starred. Ramlee’s popularity was so all- encompassing that other studios would try to capture some of his audience by mimicking not only his style, but also the plots of his more popular films. Hamzah Hussin was a screenwriter for Cathay Keris in the 1950s and 1960s, and a founding member of ASAS 50. Like P. Ramlee, who worked for the rival MFP, Hamzah understood that film could be an effective medium for conveying his ideas and beliefs although they were placed within the constraints of a profit-oriented enterprise. Hamzah was under pressure as a screenwriter to produce a certain number of films a year, and in his memoir he openly writes about the number of films made using plots taken from popular Hollywood films. Thus, the phenomenon of repetition played a role in the production of Malay films. If a particular plot, or even scenes within it, had proven successful, they were often imitated or repeated. This was particularly true in the early years of Cathay Keris, which was founded in 1953. The two founders, Loke Wan Tho and Ho Ah Loke, were trying to overcome the monopoly that the Shaw Brothers had achieved in the Malay film industry since the late 1940s, and rushed several films into production in the first two years the studio existed. One of these films was Setia (Loyalty, 1953), in which the plot revolves around a blind girl who regains her eyesight to discover that her true love is also blind. A similar theme can also be found in the film Aznan (1956), which was based on a popular 1955 Thai film Santivina. Since Loke Wan Tho wanted to distribute a local version, he remade the story of a Buddhist monk (orang Buddha) who becomes blind after being struck by a temple pole (tiang kuil), turning it into a story in which an Islamic religious leader (imam) is blinded. His belief in God allows him to regain his eyesight (Hamzah Hussin 1998:18, 20-1). Although Aznan was not popular when it was released – perhaps due to the absence of musical numbers that were ubiquitous in Malay films of the period as well as because it failed to address the common theme of urban-rural ambivalence – it reflects the tendency in Malay cinema to borrow plots from other popular films, and may have been influenced not only by the earlier Tokyo rhapsody or City lights, but also by three of the most popular Malay films of the early 1950s, all of which starred P. Ramlee: Juwita, Ibu (Mother), and Siapa salah (Who is guilty?). Juwita (1951) is the tale of Ramlee (P. Ramlee), a successful band leader in Singapore, who, after a five-year absence, returns to the kampung to see his childhood sweetheart Juwita (Kasma Booty). Juwita, however, has become blind after being hit by a tree during a storm. Ramlee vows to earn enough money to pay a doctor who can restore Juwita’s eyesight. In the city, Ramlee’s singing partner, Rohani (Salmah), has fallen in love with him and fears his

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Barnard 441 17-11-2005 13:15:53 Poster for Ibu (1953) (photograph courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore)

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affection for Juwita. To keep Ramlee and Juwita apart, Ramlee’s childhood friend Hassan (A. Rahim), who has become obsessed with Juwita, meets with Rohani and they come up with a plan to undermine the relationship. Rohani convinces Ramlee to take the band to Bangkok, where he can earn more money to pay for an operation that will restore Juwita’s eyesight. Although he is far from Juwita, Ramlee worries continually about her condition. Rohani then sends a telegram to the kampung claiming that Ramlee has died. This telegram shocks Juwita, who marries Hassan. When he returns from Bangkok, Ramlee is perplexed and angry that his beloved has found another man to be her husband. When Juwita finally is able to explain it to Ramlee, he confronts Rohani, who exposes the machinations of his childhood friend, Hassan. Eventually, Juwita and Ramlee flee the village so they can discuss the situation. Hassan and Rohani chase after the couple, frantically searching for them in separate cars. The two cars crash into each other, killing Hassan. Rohani is arrested, and Juwita and Ramlee live happily ever after. Juwita contains many of the common themes that appear in later films that focus on blind characters, although some of the major plot points have yet to crystallize. In the film, the blind character is from the kampung, and represents an innocent beauty that is pure at heart. Her urban-based boyfriend wants to cure her blindness, but must first face the machinations of a woman from the city. After coming to the realization that one of the urban-based characters has taken advantage of the situation, one of the main characters dies. In contrast to many of the other films in the genre, however, here it is an antagonist who dies. That a car is used to represent the violence of modernity entering the village is another common theme in Malay film focusing on the problems of modernization. In addition, Bangkok is the city that functions as the site of modernity that is dangerous for our kampung-based heroine. Many of these motifs were repeated two years later in two films that would set a standard for how blindness was used in Malay film. It was a standard that would be expanded in the coming decade. The first of these two films is Ibu (1953), the story of a blind widow (Neng Yatimah) who lives in a small kampung near Kuala Lumpur. Her nine-year- old son is a shoeshine boy who earns money for the two of them, while she cries every day at home over her sadness at the state of her family. One day, the boy finds a musician’s wallet and returns it without taking any of the money. The musician repays the young boy by buying him a trumpet, which the young boy becomes adept at playing. When the boy, Raimy, grows up (now played by P. Ramlee), he travels from the kampung to Singapore in search of a better life. In Singapore Raimy becomes a star, enabling him to bring his mother to the city to live with him. In the meantime, Raimy has met Ratna (played by Aini Hayati), a Singaporean woman who begins her seduc- tion of Raimy with the goal of becoming his wife, taking all of his money,

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and leaving him. Raimy’s mother realizes what is happening, but Raimy will no longer listen to her as he is under Ratna’s spell. The young boy who had worshipped his mother and sacrificed all for her has grown up to reject her in order to live with a glamorous woman in Singapore. The mother is so distraught at these events that she wanders through the streets of Singapore until she is struck by a car. The mother dies in a hospital, and Raimy realizes that his behaviour has led to his mother’s death. In the same year that Ibu was released, another film featuring blindness was made, also starring P. Ramlee,. This film was Siapa salah (Who is guilty?). Ramlee plays Jamil, the son of a well-to-do Kuala Lumpur family who falls in love with the maid’s daughter, Noorma (Normadiah). His parents do not approve of this romance, and fire the maid, who leaves the house with her daughter. When Jamil learns about his parents’ attitude, he leaves their house, finds Noorma, marries her, and begins to live a simple life. Tragedy hits the couple, however, when Noorma’s mother dies. To meet expenses, Jamil continually paints, straining his eyes until he becomes blind. With Jamil unable to work, Noorma finds employment at a coffee shop where she attracts the attention of two men. This attention makes Jamil jealous, and he leaves for Kuala Lumpur. Noorma follows Jamil to Kuala Lumpur, but learns that her mother-in-law has also passed away. In desperation, Noorma accepts a job offer from one of her earlier admirers, Salleh (Salleh Kamil). When Salleh tries to rape Noorma, she hits him with a lamp, killing him. Seeing that her work, and the attraction of other men, has led Noorma to ruin, the judge is sympathetic. He does not sentence Noorma to jail, but actually helps her find Jamil (who is at a hospital for the poor) and arranges for a doctor to perform the necessary surgery to restore Jamil’s eyesight. In both Ibu and Siapa salah, issues related to modernity for post-war Malays are placed in a clearer perspective. While Bangkok is the location of urban alienation in Juwita, Ibu and Siapa salah locate it in the two capitals of Malay modernity, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. In these two latter films, individualism and materialism are associated with important Malay urban centres, and represent danger to the Malay psyche. This danger can be seen in the character of Ratna in Ibu, whose goal is to steal Raimy’s money and manipulate him, as well as Jamil’s parents in Siapa salah who reject Noorma because of her status in the household. Blindness in the two films represents an ability to understand the evils of such attitudes, as well as an escape from the pressures of a rapidly changing society. Thus, the kampung-based blind mother in Ibu can metaphorically see through these plans. Although she warns her son, he is blind to Ratna’s materialistic desires. In Siapa salah, Jamil escapes from the pressures of providing for his family in a market economy by losing his sight. He then becomes a background character, while the story follows the problems that Noorma faces in the urban environment of Kuala

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Lumpur, where she is alone, sexually assaulted, and even put on trial for defending herself. In Siapa salah, as well as in the earlier Juwita, however, there is hope that this blindness can be cured. It only takes a kind individual who is willing to share, an individual who reflects the wisdom of kampung values and knowledge of the benefits of modernity. Thus, the contradictions between a black-and-white consideration of the two worlds – of the urban and rural – are exposed. Whether it is the band leader Ramlee in Juwita or the judge in Siapa salah – who also represents the goodness of the ‘blind’ and caring Western judicial system – they point the way to balance between the two extremes of modernity and tradition. Of these three films – Juwita, Ibu, and Siapa salah – the first two were directed by an Indian from Malaya, S. Ramanathan, who was born in Kuala Lumpur. Ramanathan was considered to have a better understanding of the various attitudes Malays had toward the growing modernity in urban centres like Singapore. In addition, P. Ramlee assisted Ramanathan in the development of the stories, and it was during this period that P. Ramlee became a star. The director of Siapa salah was B.N. Rao, who was well known for his support of many of the ideals of ASAS 50 (Ahmad Sarji 1999:315, 318). The support for activist organizations such as ASAS 50 was in a context of rapid social change, which, in the words of Tim Harper (1999:221), led to ‘moral anxiety’. Singapore was the home of an increasingly mobile society as well as unequal measures of prosperity. The rise of popular entertainment centres, such as Great World City, which is featured in Ibu, meant that Malays were interacting with a variety of ethnic groups while consuming new forms of technology, including popular music and film. This vibrant mix of changing economic and social interaction left many in Singapore, and the rest of Malaya, uneasy. For example, a Chinese newspaper editor in 1953 criti- cized the developing society as selfish, materialistic, and ignorant (Harper 1999:221). One of the results of this anxiety is that much of the ambivalence over modernization was being explored in the popular medium of film. In these plots, blindness is something that has happened naturally, but there is hope for a cure. The ignorance stemming from materialism and selfishness can be overcome. The characters simply need to remember their traditional values, and all will be harmonious within the community. By the late 1950s Ramlee had become the biggest film star throughout the Malay Peninsula, and the Indian directors who had guided Malay film in its earlier stages were surpassed by Malay filmmakers who not only wanted to create a commercial product, but also address the issues their community was facing. In his personal life, Ramlee was also dealing with the issue of blindness. Beginning in the mid-1950s his father began suffering from an eye condition that led to blindness (Abdullah Hussain 1966:106). The changes that Ramlee faced on a personal level and shifts in society at large as Malaya

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moved closer to independence led to more cynical and violent answers. In a milieu of communist emergencies, intense political debates, expanding elec- triﬁcation and public housing, modernity was increasingly seen as something that could not simply be avoided by returning to the kampung. Modernity was destroying the kampung spirit, and it was causing feelings of alienation.

Alienation, modernity and mutilation

In 1962 Singapore, along with the northern Borneo territories of Sabah and Sarawak, joined Malaya to form the new nation of Malaysia. The merger fol- lowed a period of intense political debate on such issues as citizenship, the relationship between the various states, political control, and even identity. The union of the various states, however, was uneasy. Lee Kuan Yew and the Tunku Abdul Rahman continually disagreed about the role that Lee’s People’s Action Party (PAP) and the Tunku’s United Malays National Organization (UMNO) would play in the other’s stronghold. Public housing was being constructed, particularly in Singapore, and much of it was at the expense of the kampung. In large urban centres like Singapore the new migrants had to deal with a vast amount of change, much of it resulting in destruction of the institutions, neigh- bourhoods, and cultural practices with which they were comfortable. Such outward manifestations of progress left many feeling alienated. In the midst of these contradictions, anxiety and debates, Ibu mertuaku was released. While the first half of the film has been discussed in the introduction, and mimics many of the earlier tropes of sadness and distance from the materialism of modernity, the second half is equally melodramatic and pushes the allegory in new directions. At the beginning of the second half of the film Kassim Selamat has become blind after being told his wife and child have died. The cause of his blindness is his inability to leave the dark hovel where he lives, due mainly to his sadness. Since he has not paid his rent for several months, he is evicted from the storage area he rents under a house. Kassim wanders the countryside until a well-to-do woman invites him to her house out of pity. At the house Kassim regains his health, falls in love with the woman’s daughter (Zaiton), and begins to tour the Malay Peninsula under a new name with a new band. When the band arrives in Singapore, his former wife, who has remarried on the assumption that he has abandoned her – all due to the machinations of the mother-in-law – goes to see the blind musical sensation – Kassim Selamat – with her new husband, who happens to be an eye surgeon. The surgeon volunteers to operate on Kassim, who does not know the identity of the man’s wife. When Kassim regains his eyesight, he discovers that the surgeon who has operated on him is now married to his former wife, and is raising his child as his own. In a moment of extreme despair Kassim locks

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Barnard 447 17-11-2005 13:16:02 Poster for Sayang Si Buta (1965) (photograph courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore)

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himself in a room, removes ornamental forks that are displayed on the wall, and uses them to blind himself. No surgery can ever repair the damage. With the lasting image of Kassim blinded, blood running down his face, and the mother-in-law in hysterics after realizing how her materialism and prejudice against the poor Kassim have resulted in tragedy, the film ends. Ibu mertuaku is one of the most popular Malay films ever made, and all Malays in Singapore and Malaysia are familiar with it. The hand-wringing villainy of Nonya Mansur and the self-blinding of Kassim can still be discussed in casual conversation more than 40 years after the film’s release. The use of blindness in the film, however, is quite controversial. Hamzah Hussin (1998:87) cites the blinding as one of the most unrealistic moments in the history of Malay cinema – citing it as a ‘Chinese orientation’ – since self-mutilation is forbidden by Islam. Such mutilation, and the violence it entails, reflects the shift in attitude toward the trope, as well as the issue of border crossing with the many connections to Oedipus blatantly deployed. While modern medicine may provide a solution to the blindness that Malays suffered pre- viously, they are now violently and excessively putting such cures beyond reach. The cure is no longer a worthy, or desired, goal. While the motif had not been used in Malay film for almost a decade, it came back on the eve of great change in Singapore in which the state was now to play an even greater role. This shift in the trope of blindness, to one that is more violent and per- manent, can also be found in films made at the rival Cathay Keris film studios. Korban fitnah (Victim of slander, 1962) was an independently produced film by Maria Menado. An early example of the power of women in this new medium, the film was made in Singapore but featured a number of well-known Indonesian film stars, such as Sukarno M. Noor, in an attempt to circumvent Indonesian film import restrictions. In the film, a newlywed husband, Hassan, leaves his wife after being told that his younger brother, Hussein, is having an affair with her. Hassan eventually realizes he has destroyed his marriage by believing such rumours when he sees a woman who resembles his wife. As Hassan approaches this woman he is hit by a car, blinding him. His wife rushes to the hospital, where she learns from a Western doctor, Dr Wyman, that Hassan can only regain his eyesight if he has transplants of the eyes of someone who has recently died (‘Baru mati, matanya boleh’). Desperate after learning of his brother’s condition, Hussein volunteers to commit suicide. He is stopped, and put on trial. When the judge learns of the circumstances behind the suicide attempt, he lets Hussein walk away – once again, as in the earlier Siapa salah, representing the trope that ‘blind’ Western court systems can dispense justice. However, as the movie ends, Hassan remains blind. While the motif of blindness is extrapolated to suicide in the modern city, as well as to modern science and the justice system, the use of this motif had not yet met its most clear-cut and violent end. Such an

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ending was developed in a film that is the last one to use this allegory, and one of the last films to be made by the film studios in Singapore. It is Sayang Si Buta (Pity the blind one, 1965). Sayang Si Buta stars Daeng Sofia as Annie, a kind-hearted blind girl who lives with her more cosmopolitan sister Asmah, who works in the city of Singapore. The family lives in a traditional kampung, where everyone cooper- ates, and Annie and Asmah’s mother sells noodles in a warung (stall). Annie is the personification of idealized traditional Malay values. She dresses mod- estly, speaks politely, is willing to share, and is always pleasant to visitors. In the city, Asmah begins dating a man, Dr Rashid (Jins Shamsuddin), who happens to be one of the leading eye surgeons in the world. Once the two become engaged Dr Rashid agrees to operate on Annie. Prior to the operation Annie makes the pointed declaration that she will never change even if she regains her eyesight. Following successful surgery, Annie realizes that her sister’s fiancé, the man who has restored her sight, is quite handsome and develops a crush on him. After examining Annie one day, Dr Rashid informs the family that it is very important they not allow her to be sad, since this would cause a recurrence of her blindness. Annie begins to use this information to manipulate her family members, even to the point of breaking up the engagement between her sister and Dr Rashid. Annie finally marries Dr Rashid, using the excuse that if he rejected her she would be sad, and moves into his incredibly luxurious house. Annie then begins to browbeat his servants, spend Dr Rashid’s money at an alarming rate, and treat her own family members as inferiors. This behaviour reaches a boiling point when Annie’s mother comes to spend a night at the house while Dr Rashid is away on business. Annie makes her mother sleep on the kitchen floor. When her mother complains that she is cold and the floor is hard, Annie kicks her mother out of the house into a tropical rainstorm. The mother is unable to find shelter, and eventually crawls under a parked car to escape the downpour. The next morning the mother stumbles home, where she dies in Asmah’s arms. Realizing that her sister’s lack of concern has led to the death of their mother and the loss of her fiancé, as well as being an extremely poor example of acceptable Malay behaviour, Asmah immediately goes to Annie’s house and demands that Annie apologize to everyone and prepare for their mother’s funeral. Annie mocks her older sister. Asmah slaps her with such fury that her head plunges toward a coffee table decorated with two ornamental flags. The flagsticks plunge into her eyes, blinding Annie. At the funeral Annie appears, heavily bandaged and stumbling. She begs Asmah for forgiveness. As the film ends Annie proclaims that although she is blind again she can now see the error of her ways, realizing the importance of the traditional cultural practices that she had personified as a simple girl in the kampung. Ibu mertuaku, Korban fitnah and Sayang Si Buta are the culmination of a long

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running commentary on modernity in Malay film in which blindness is used as a metaphor for the dichotomy of perceived urban and rural lifestyles. In these films the main characters are blind (or become blind) and regain their eyesight (or are at least offered the possibility), only to experience a selfish, materialistic world that has alienated them from the good of the kampung. Each film ends with the main character being permanently blind, and in two cases it is due to their own conscious decisions or actions. In the midst of the changes that were occurring in Malaysia when both films were released, the mutilations reflect alienation in the Malay community. The attitudes of Singapore-based characters are so exaggerated in the films of the early 1960s that the relatively subtle critique of modernity and urbanism of films in the early 1950s is lost. These characters denigrate their servants, manipulate their relatives, place a monetary value on all interaction, and even kill their mothers. Traditional values are seemingly gone forever. The ‘moral anxiety’ of the early 1950s, in which blindness could be cured, was no longer possible. Alienation was the order of the day, one in which characters have regained their eyesight only to suffer a painful mutilation when the harshness of the world is revealed.

Conclusion

In the 1950s and 1960s Malaya/Malaysia was undergoing a tremendous amount of social change. One method of examining how this period was understood is through Malay film. A number of Malay writers and activists found work in the vibrant film industry of the Peninsula, which was centred on Singapore at the time, and proceeded to infuse many of the films with their ideas, hopes, and understandings of the society they saw around them. As part of these developments, and perhaps due to the phenomenon of repetition, blindness became a metaphor in a number of films to address the issue of modernity and tradition, and the tension between rural and urban. In films produced in the early 1950s blindness occurs among kampung-based characters, or among supporting players within the larger drama. Their blindness is usually caused or compounded by a sadness in their lives. In these films, an urban-based character attempts to arrange for an operation that will remedy the condition, but only after a character has had to deal with the underside of modernity. The use of blindness as a trope for moral/ethical failure is alien to traditional Malay culture. Thus, its use and repetition represent the exter- nal influences and ideas of modernity in Malay filmmaking of the period. While the city was frightening, it held the possibility of change for the better. Characters in these films had to deal first with the negative sides of such a life, but if they retained the positive traditional values of Malay culture, all would be well. By the early 1960s, however, after the promise of independ-

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ence had transitioned to debates over merger, identity, and economic and social disruption, the metaphor of blindness had also shifted. Although technology could cure the condition, the world that accompanied this technology was one that was unbearable. Unlike the earlier supporting characters facing a sightless life, it was now the main character who becomes blind in a man- ner that is violent and irreversible. It was a world that promoted selfishness and materialism. Blindness now became an act of mutilation, not a symbol of sadness but one of alienation. In an excellent recent study of the written literature of this period, Virginia Hooker (2000) describes the goals of prominent authors of the time as ‘writing a new society’. While numerous important novels and short stories were written during this period, the audience for these works was extremely limited, particularly in a society that was more orally based (Derks 1996). New media were appearing, and they allowed activist artists of the period to reach the masses. One new medium was film. Despite the number of times filmmakers men- tion the ties between film and important groups such as ASAS 50, there have been no studies that focus on the rise of film as a new voice for intellectuals.6 This article is a preliminary attempt at exploring how some of the metaphors used by these artists can be placed in the context of social developments of the period. Malay film is an untapped source for such studies. Films offer insight not only into the popular culture of the period in which they were made, but also into how social and political change was perceived.

6 Histories of the period simply state the number of ﬁlms made, or techniques used, without putting them in their intellectual and historical context. Examples of this include Uhde and Uhde 2000; White 1996. Malay-language works that emphasize the intellectual legacy of the participants include Ahmad Sarji 1999, Hamzah Hussin 1998, and Jamil Sulong 1990.

References

Abdullah Hussain 1966 Gagak Di-Rimba: Suatu Kesah Hidup P. Ramlee. Kuala Lumpur: Angkat- an Baru. Ahmad Sarji 1999 P. Ramlee; Erti yang sakti. Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk. Barnard, Rohayati Paseng and Timothy P. Barnard 2002 ‘The ambivalence of P. Ramlee; Penarek beca and Bujang lapok in perspective’, Asian Cinema 13-2:9-23. Barnard, Timothy P. 2004 ‘Chickens, cakes and kitchens; Food and modernity in Malay ﬁlm’, in: Anne L. Bower (ed.), Reel food; Essays on food and ﬁlm, pp. 77-87. Lon- don: Routledge.

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Sĕjarah Mĕlayu 1970 Sĕjarah Mĕlayu, or, Malay annals. An annotated translation by C.C. Brown with a new introduction by R. Roolvink. Singapore: Oxford University Press. [Originally published in 1953.] Derks, Will 1996 ‘“If not to anything else”; Some reﬂections on modern Indonesian literature’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 152:341-52. Hamzah Hussin 1998 Memoir Hamzah Hussin; Dari Cathay Keris ke Studio Merdeka. Bangi: University Kebangsaan Malaysia. Harding, James and Ahmad Sarji 2002 P. Ramlee; The bright star. Subang Jaya: Pelanduk. Harper, T.N. 1999 The end of empire and the making of Malaya. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Hikayat Siak 1992 Hikayat Siak. Dirawikan oleh Tengku Said, diselenggarakan oleh Muhammad Yusoff Hashim. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pus- taka, Kementerian Pendidikan. Hooker, Virginia Matheson 2000 Writing a new society; Social change through the novel in Malay. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Southeast Asia Publications Series.] Jamil Sulong 1990 Kaca permata; Memoir seorang pengarah. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Kementerian Pendidikan. Keris Mas (pseud. Kamaludin Muhammad) 2004 The memoirs of Keris Mas; Spanning 30 years of literary development. Translated by Shah Rezad Ibrahim and Nor Azizah Abu Bakar. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Uhde, Jan and Yvonne Ng Uhde 2000 Latent images; Film in Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Van der Heide, William 2002 Malaysian cinema, Asian ﬁlm; Border crossings and national cultures. Amster- dam: Amsterdam University Press. [Film Culture in Transition.] White, Timothy 1996 ‘Historical poetics, Malaysian cinema, and the Japanese Occupation’, Kinema 6:5-27.

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