Kee Principles

From the Sun today, an interview with Kee Thuan Chye - journalist, actor, playwright ... my editor at the Star when I write for the Mind Our English page, and of course friend, (when he's not chasing me for the article I should have written weeks ago!).

I'm so happy to read that Thuan Chye is writing a new play to be called The Fall of Singapura , based on an extract from the Sejarah Melayu. Of course, anyone who know the Birch play will realise that this won't be a straightforward historical narrative, and he says he is doing "A lot of cheeky things ... but very much reflecting and questioning what is going on today." The issues the play raises are what he sees as the Malaysian celebration of mediocrity, and "our confusion about ourselves and the contradictions in our wanting to be progressive and yet adhering to our conservatism".

But I guess the bad news in the interview is that the novel "in-progress" (that I long to read having seen the extract that appeared in New Writing 10) doesn't seem to be progressing.

I'll probably write it in my next lifetime [laughs].

(*sigh*)

Asked whether he thinks there is enough support for English creative writers and English-language theatre in Malaysia, he says:

Of course not-lah. We don't have the infrastructure for it. And for a long time, you know, English creative writing had to really work in isolation. There was no recognition for it, and it wasn't easy to get published, for obvious reasons. Because there wasn't a large enough market. There still isn't a large market for Malaysian English writing.

In the 1970s and 1980s, some of us felt really guilty continuing to write in the colonial language. It was an uneasy time for us. Even now, we could not dream of getting writing residencies in institutions of learning or writing grants.

And of course, you know, because [pause] there is — I don’t know if it still exists — there used to be this doctrine that national literature was to be literature written in Malay, and literature written in other languages were known as 'sectional' or 'communal' literature.

I mean, that's also another demeaning thing-lah. If you write in your own mother tongue, you’re only considered to be 'sectional', you know [laughs cynically]. It's the same with the National Culture Policy which still remains to this day. It says that national culture must be based on Malay culture and Nusantara culture! Can you imagine it? Nusantara. That means they're including Indonesia. They're looking so far afield. And only incorporating 'suitable elements' from immigrant cultures.

What are these 'suitable elements'? I mean, it's really terrible, you know. If people say, 'Okay-lah, I take what is suitable from you.' How does that make you feel? And who are they to decide what is suitable and what is not? What do they mean by 'suitabl'’? You mean, there are things in my culture that are not suitable? These are things that I cannot reconcile with. I don't know if they will change in my lifetime or not.

Does he think there's enough appreciation for English literature in Malaysia?

I don't think a lot of people are very much into literature and again, because of the way our society is going, towards consumerism, towards science and technology. As I said earlier, the regard for intellectual development is not quite there. They have reintroduced English literature into the classroom at the lower forms. It's been going on for Malay literature. But for English, it's only just been reintroduced. A lot of teachers don't even know how to teach it. The students are quite lost! So, it will take a lot of time-lah for us to have any kind of interest or grounding in literature to appreciate it more deeply.

Of course, Thuan Chye has strong views about how he sees things moving in Malaysia and I found myself nodding in agreement with this:

By and large, Malaysians are still intellectually shallow. The push towards consumerism has made it worse. Shopping and having fun are what interest Malaysians more than the need to acquire culture. Even as I say that the media needs to address issues, I also realise that many people don’t really want to discuss them or are not interested at all. ... They're afraid or they don’t care. Or they’ve been conditioned to accept things as they are. Our education system has been extremely effective in indoctrinating our children from the moment they enter school.

As for racial relations, on the surface, it now looks to have improved. On the surface, it looks as if we are a happy family. But at a deeper level, if you were to, for example, ask university students of a particular race, let's say a Malay student, to name you a non-Malay friend of theirs, or vice-versa, you'd be surprised that they would be quite hard put to give you a name.

I think racial polarisation has still not been lessened. We are a far cry from the good old days when Malays would sit down with non-Malays to break bread together regardless where. Nowadays, if you invite your Malay friends to your home to have a meal with you, I'm not quite sure that they will accept. There’s a wariness.

Overall, a very nice article, and the old photos add a more personal touch. But I wonder why the interviewer thinks it a good idea to transcribe every little pause and "lah". Crisper editing would have made this a better piece, surely?