The Absent Mother: Malay Cinema, Cultural Memory and
Mediated Spectatorship
By Alfian Bin Sa’at
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
Nanyang Technological University
Introduction
In the year 2006, the National Museum of Singapore Film Gallery commissioned
Singaporean filmmaker Royston Tan to produce a montage sequence from archived
footage of Malay films produced during what was known as the Shaw-Cathay-Keris
studio era. This sequence would form the centrepiece of the Film Gallery, one in a series
of four ‘Living Galleries’.
Through a textual and cultural analysis of Tan’s montage, this essay will examine how
‘Singapore film history’ is represented in the Film Gallery. It will ask the following
questions as a starting point: Who is the intended audience for the montage? How
important is it to have someone familiar with the filmic material working on the
montage? What scenes have been emphasized and which ones excluded? Is it possible to
determine a canon of Malay films, and should this be based on critical or popular criteria?
How can technical innovations in film editing liberate the subtext of these films or
impose other texts? Finally, how do these films problematise our notions of not only our
national cinematic heritage, but the nation itself?
Resisting Multiracial Scripting
The ‘Living Galleries’, which also consisted of the Food, Fashion and Photography
galleries, were conceived to showcase artifacts that were associated with a ‘people’s
history’. While the ‘History Gallery’ ostensibly presented an ‘official history’, unfolding
through the display of archaeological relics, preserved manuscripts, legal documents and
the like, the focus of the ‘Living Galleries’ was on popular culture and social history. The
National Museum of Singapore website states that:
“These four living galleries focus on four lifestyle themes close to the heart
of Singaporeans. These galleries celebrate the creativity of Singapore
society through time and serve as unique platforms for the world to
appreciate the Singapore culture.”1
‘Singapore culture’ is a widely contested term, reflected in literary, sociological and
historical scholarship. The term ‘Singaporean’ itself is more securely employed to
describe one’s citizenship status, rather than national identity. However, the main
articulation of Singapore’s culture, at least in official discourses, is as ‘multiculturalism’,
but codified by the state into a typology recognizing four ‘official races’: The Chinese,
Malays, Indians and Others. Despite the deeply unfashionable use of the term ‘race’ in
academic circles, the state has described Singapore as a ‘multiracial society’.2
2
In conceptualizing the ‘Living Galleries’, the museum has similarly harnessed this
multiracial trope to represent ‘Singapore society’. In the Fashion Gallery for example,
there are displays of the Chinese cheongsam, the Malay kebaya and the Indian saree. In
the Food Gallery, street hawker fare become racial signifiers: noodles for the Chinese,
satay for the Malays and roti prata for the Indians. Similarly, the Photography Gallery
showcases photographs from family albums belonging to different ethnic communities.
The Film Gallery, however, presented a challenge to this mode of classification. The
films produced during the ‘golden age’ of studio film production in Singapore, periodised
as the years between 1955 and 1965, were overwhelmingly Malay. They featured Malay
actors, speaking the Malay language, in plots often adapted from Malay histories and
legends. As a matter of fact, the only Chinese film made by a local studio during this
period was Cathay-Keris’ ‘Lion City’, released in 1960.3
This might explain the presence of a ‘Wayang Gallery’ within the Film Gallery itself.
Wayang is the vernacular for Chinese street opera, a theatrical performance form
involving elaborate costumes and makeup, stylized gestures and singing styles, and a
standard traditional repertoire. It is usually performed in conjunction with religious
festivals such as the Lunar 7th Month.4 The ‘Wayang Gallery’ carried displays of a puppet
theatre set as well as spectacular Wayang costumes and props.
However, Chinese street opera has its Malay counterpart in the Bangsawan.5 For
curatorial coherence, paraphernalia from both forms could have been exhibited under the
3
category of ‘Theatre’ or ‘Performance’. In fact, the latter term might have allowed the
gallery to also include accoutrements from performance forms as diverse as Indian
Bharatanatyam, a dance often performed during religious festivals in Hindu temples.
This would have allowed the gallery to conform to a standardized and inclusive
multicultural script.
In addition to the spatial counterbalance as presented by the ‘Wayang Gallery’, there
were also other artifacts which aimed to mitigate the seemingly monoethnic character of
the cinema section. An exhibit of film star memorabilia included a tray bearing the image
of Hong Kong actress Lin Dai, film entertainment magazines written in Chinese, as well
as trading cards with portraits of Hollywood stars. However, these were more
representative of patterns of consumption and fandom of imported cultural products,
rather than the output of the local film industry. The latter remained predominantly,
stubbornly Malay in character.6
The Absent Motherland
While the Film Gallery might present a narrative of the history of film in Singapore, the
films also present what could be called a history in film. While narrative is often
foregrounded in these films, involving audience identification with characters and
investment in plot developments, it is the ‘background’ which invites retroactive analyses
by contemporary viewers. By ‘background’, I refer here to various details in the mise-en-
4
scene, which includes the setting (especially location shots), the fashions (hairstyle,
dressing), the speech patterns and mannerisms, the furniture, the modes of transport, the
clues to one’s understanding of a certain socio-cultural milieu. What served as merely
window-dressing in a frame ultimately becomes a window to the past. This is what
Roland Barthes would refer to in Camera Lucida as the ‘studium’ in his analysis of
photographs, which he describes as such:
“…I receive them as political testimony or good historical scenes: for it is
culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the
figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions.” (Barthes, 1981)
A brief survey of films produced during the ‘golden age’ reveals a startling lack of nonMalay characters. When they do appear, they are in the form of cameos (such as the Sikh
jaga in Seniman Bujang Lapok) or minstrelsy (like Leng Hussain’s yellowface turn as a
Chinese rag-and-bone man in Ali Baba Bujang Lapok). This might seem to be an
anomalous situation, considering how the Chinese population in Singapore had already
outnumbered the Malays by the end of the 19th century. By 1891, for example,
Singapore’s ethnic demographics consisted of 67.1% Chinese, 19.7% Malays, 8.8%
Indians and 2.1% Others.7
However, it should be noted that Singapore was then considered the cosmopolitan heart
of the Malay world, an urban centre which attracted intellectuals, artists and nationalists
from the region. As Van der Heide notes:
5
“Singapore in the 1950’s became the pre-eminent Malay culture centre;
despite the fact that it was primarily an ethnically Chinese city, it was also
the socio-cultural capital of the Malay world. One of the ‘Generation of
‘50’ writers, Keris Mas, described Singapore as a cosmopolitan city,
which became a centre for broadcasting, publishing and film-making, and
thus attracted young Malays from all over the Peninsula.” (Van der
Heide, 2002)
In addition, the films were exhibited throughout the Malay Peninsula, and to a lesser
extent, Southern Thailand and Indonesia. Hence, the market for the films did not solely
depend on the island’s domestic population. The films were addressed to a Malayspeaking public, and reflected a growing consciousness of their historical past as well as
the first stirrings of a decolonized imagination. The former was portrayed through the
cinematic adaptations of stories from classical texts such as the ‘Sejarah Melayu’ (for
example, Singapura Dilanggar Todak and Hang Tuah), and the latter through gradually
insistent calls for creative control to be transferred from Indian to Malay directorial hands
(a feat P. Ramlee achieved with Penarek Becha in 1955).
In 1964, P. Ramlee, regarded as the most prolific and talented film-maker in the Malay
film industry, migrated to Kuala Lumpur. After 19 years at Shaw’s Malay Film
Productions studios in Singapore, he decided to restart his career, relocating his
operations at the new Merdeka Studios at Hulu Kelang. As Mohd Zamberi Abdul Malek
6
has remarked, “With the formation of Malaysia, P Ramlee felt the need to serve his
mother land and make KL the hub of the Malay film industry.” (Zamberi, 2005 p. 199)
It is illuminating that Mohd Zamberi has referred to the Peninsula as the ‘mother land’.
The Peninsula consisted of Melaka, the cradle of Malay civilization and sovereignty, the
expansive rice bowls of Kedah, the coastal and interior rural populations of its other
states. Singapore’s connection to this hinterland depended on its status as a site of
modernity—unlike many Malay states, it was free of feudalistic baggage. Its status as a
free port also meant that it was extremely porous to globalizing influences and new
technologies. Singapore existed in a symbiotic relationship with this ‘mother land’: its
films drew sustenance and inspiration from the cultural repository and the talents of the
Peninsula; on the other hand, its film studios (and their vertically-integrated branches)
provided the infrastructure for the actual production, distribution and exhibition of films.
In 1967, Shaw closed down its Malay Film Productions Studios in Jalan Ampas. Cathay
was to follow suit five years later.8 The decline of the Malay film industry coincided with
the period subsequent to the expulsion of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia in
1965, and the subsequent marginalization of the Singapore Malay community. British
withdrawal from the naval bases, as well as the Singapore government’s decision to
retrench and restrict personnel in the uniformed services, resulted in widespread
unemployment for the community. Malay, while retaining its politically-expedient status
as a national language, was eventually displaced by English as the country’s lingua
7
franca. Malays in Singapore found themselves transformed overnight from a majority to a
minority constituency, with diminished political influence.9
To the Malay Singaporean, the history in film is precisely this narrative of estrangement
and dispossession, where each Malay film is both testimony and eulogy. The ‘golden
age’ of Malay cinema was also a prelapsarian golden age for the Singapore Malay
community. There is a double nostalgia operating: not only for cinematic achievements,
but also for a time when Singapore Malays were integrated into a wider Peninsular
community. Kuo Pao Kun once described Singaporeans as ‘cultural orphans’:
"As a former colony . . . [we] have no nation, or culture, to go back to.
We started as a people made up of immigrants coming from different
places—big cultures, great cultures—but they brought to Singapore only
bits and pieces of the great cultures and we have always been preoccupied
with
making
money,
making
a
better
living…
call
ourselves
`multicultural', but actually none of the cultures we have inherited are
whole." (Kuo, 1993)
Unlike the Chinese and Indians, the Malays in Singapore have never considered
themselves to be immigrants. Even if they had traveled from the Peninsula or the
Indonesian islands to Singapore, the passage was often conceived of as internal migration
within a Malay archipelago which they considered home. The real cultural orphanage for
Malay Singaporeans was not during the colonial period, but began with Separation in
8
1965. The splitting of talents and facilities across the Causeway that occurred at the
twilight of the Malay film industry represented an infrastructural disintegration of
cinema, as well as the dis-integration of the Malay cultural psyche.
Royston Tan’s ‘Mother’
In 2002, Royston Tan, one of the most acclaimed Singaporean filmmakers of the 1990’s
‘revival period’ (Uhde, 2000), released the short film ‘Mother’. Considered one of his
best works, it was ironically assembled from ‘found footage’ from the private collection
of a ‘Mr. Pereira’ (credited as Director of Photography).
‘Mother’ consists of stock 8-mm footage showing scenes of a Eurasian family, overlaid
with music and a Mandarin voiceover. The footage is composed of grainy, faded, handheld shots, commemorating the various stages in the life of a family: excursions,
birthdays, gatherings, travels. What is most arresting about the footage is how it captures
a Singapore in the 70’s and early 80’s, with the fashions, architecture, landmarks, and the
product designs (automobiles, tricycles, swings) of that period.
The Mandarin voiceover, according to Tan, was scripted after an interview with a prison
inmate. It expresses the bitterness felt by the narrator towards his mother, the malevolent
shame he felt at what he perceived were her naiveté, her shabbiness, and her clumsy
attempts at consolation. Near the end of the narration, however, hatred turns to remorse.
9
An attempt at reconciliation turns out to be futile, as the narrator visits his old house and
realizes that his mother has departed.
The juxtaposition between the visuals and the voiceover strikes one as jarring at first. For
one thing, the narrator is an adult Chinese male, whereas the main protagonist in the
footage is a very young Eurasian girl. For another, the angsty and frequently sordid tone
is completely at odds with the fresh-faced innocence of the protagonist and the idyllic
images of gardens and beaches.
However, it is this tension that makes ‘Mother’ such a fascinating and heartbreaking film.
The narrator’s story is told with a vengeful, confessional exhibitionism, with multiple
references to his materialism and hedonism. It is inherently brutal, but the violence is
further underlined by the contrast with images of childhood and familial gentility. It is
also an ingenious instance of self-reflexivity, because the filmmaker’s attempt to affix
meaning and narrative to the images is also an act of hermeneutic violence.
The narrator’s own longing for a re-connection with his mother echoes the position of
Tan the filmmaker on many levels: it speaks of the latter’s ambivalence as a privileged
voyeur to someone else’s visual diary, his inter-generational yearning to connect with a
Singaporean social landscape he never knew, as well as his status as a commercial
filmmaker, in contrast with the ‘innocence’ of Mr Pereira, the amateur. As the narrator
says, ‘You offered your love to me…I gave my body to others…the world I know is
different from yours.’
10
The Film Gallery Montage
It is tempting to perform a productive intertextual reading of Tan’s ‘Mother’ and the Film
Gallery montage. The parallels are evident: both projects involve stock footages: one of a
family’s private memories, another from the Shaw Brothers Malay Film Productions
archives. Both involve the same filmmaker editing the footage to create a new work. The
beginning of ‘Mother’ begins with the line: ‘I ran away…to start my life again…without
you.’ This is a sentiment similar to that of Singapore as a prodigal son, addressing the
maternal Peninsula post-Separation.
However, the comparisons end here. In ‘Mother’, the footage was obtained from the
personal collection of the Pereira family. The Malay films, however, have entered public
consciousness as a kind of ‘cultural memory’ for the Malay community. In addition to the
narratives of loss inscribed in them, they also contain certain scenes and dialogue
fragments that have achieved iconic status.
The recognition of these scenes is not restricted to the cinemagoers of the 50’s and 60’s,
but extends to younger generations as well. The “ratings of old P. Ramlee films…is very
high” (Uhde, 2000, p. 10) on Singapore television, and many of these films are regularly
screened on special occasions such as Hari Raya. It is perhaps ironic that television,
which was partly to blame for the demise of Malay cinema, is now ensuring its posterity.
The popularity of these films is demonstrated by youngsters quoting verbatim dialogue
11
from the films and the number of clips extracted from these films that are posted on
video-hosting websites such as YouTube.
Tan has admitted to being unfamiliar to most, if not all, of the films of the ‘golden age’.
In addition, many of the films he watched did not carry English subtitles. As such, he has
adopted a formalist approach to the montage, relying on visual matches to link scenes
together. He has also retained the soundtrack to the scenes, deciding not to overlay
additional music or voiceovers as what he had done in ‘Mother’. For the Film Gallery
project, Tan was given three screens to work with; the end result would be a triptych in
the form of a film installation.
The montage begins with a shot of the moon, which is “associated with love and provides
a link between absent lovers in Malaysian and Indian cinema.” (Van der Heide, 2002,
p180). The voice of P. Ramlee, the most popular legend of Malay cinema, is heard. He is
singing the first verse to the song Nak Dara Rindu, a lovelorn lullaby, from the film
Bujang Lapok (1957). It begins with the line ‘Di waktu malam, bulan mengambang’ (In
the evening, the moon is waxing).
Shots of children are seen next, as if responding to the summons of his song; these scenes
are from Anakku Sazali (1956). P. Ramlee is then shown strumming his guitar while
sitting on a window sill, in the centre screen. On the left and right screens, various other
actors make their appearances, enthralled by the music: Zaiton opening the window, Aziz
Sattar moony-eyed, Normadiah peeping from behind a curtain, Saadiah enraptured,
12
Sarimah in a swoon. From Anakku Sazali, we see the montage of posters with titles of
cities like ‘Penang’, ‘Ipoh’ and ‘Taiping’, which in the film announced the panPeninsular popularity of the saxophonist Kassim Selamat, but which in the context of the
montage signified the widespread appeal of Malay films.
The moon is shown again, but this time from the film Sumpah Orang Minyak (1958). As
a signifier, it has shifted from connoting romance to horror. Scenes from the film follow,
which includes the bunian (spirit) procession, Si Bongkok’s confrontation with the devil
Shaitan, and villagers terrorized by the eponymous character. Amidst screaming, the
scene shifts to footage of World War II from the film Matahari (1951)10, about a
resistance heroine played by Maria Menado. There are shots of aeroplanes flying, rubble
and explosions. Lightning sears the sky, and another explosion occurs in a cemetery,
resurrecting the pontianak in Anak Pontianak (1959)11. From this film, we witness scenes
of the transformation of Hashimah Yon into the pontianak, the mad scientist Haj Sattar
into a deformed beast, and of Jins Shamsuddin’s hands into hairy claws.
A struggle occurs in Anak Pontianak, which then segues into a scene of two men
wrestling in Hang Tuah (1956). The climactic scene from the latter movie is shown,
where Hang Tuah challenges Hang Jebat to a duel. And then the strains of the song Joget
Pahang is heard, from the same film, showing P. Ramlee singing again and dancing the
joget with the cast of the Melaka court. Hang Tuah gradually becomes colorized (the
original was in colour, but it was decolorized by Tan for the montage). The left and right
screens show other dance sequences, from films spanning three decades: Cinta (1948),
13
Ribut (1955, Shaw’s first colour film), and Raja Bersiong (1967, Shaw’s last film, also in
colour)12. The montage ends with P. Ramlee and Zaiton gazing at each other in the centre
screen, with Ahmad Mahmud and Saadiah, in two different shots, occupying the flanking
screens.
Tan has used non-diegetic links to stitch the scenes together, ranging from visual matches
(the moon, the explosion, the physical struggle), to thematic relationships (the war and
horror genres). In addition, the triptych format allowed for some inventive editing, such
as a bunian chariot (from Sumpah Orang Minyak) traversing across all three screens, and
an image flashed in succession from one screen to another, to conjure the illusion of
movement (rhythmically matched with a shot of P. Ramlee’s hand playing the guitar).
The end of the montage is probably where the editing was most experimental: on the left
screen, for example, the image was upside-down, with the border visible between two
‘film frames’. Also, the sound was manipulated such that the ending of the line ‘Bagus
Hang Tuah!’ (Well done, Hang Tuah!) at the end of the Joget Pahang, was echoed
repeatedly.13 By suggesting a malfunction in the projecting apparatus, as well as
conjuring the sensation of a final line uttered in a cavernous and empty cinema hall, Tan
subtly signaled the eventual decline of Malay cinema and the end of an era.
14
Absences and Gaps
In selecting the types of films to be incorporated into the montage, there were bound to
be some exclusions. As a matter of fact, one can imagine the two gaps between the three
screens as a knowing reminder of those scenes that were left out of the final cut.
M. Amin has identified eight genres of Malay films, which he classifies as folk stories,
social realism, feudal critiques, legends, community stories, comedies, religio-didactic
films and horror (M. Amin, 1998). Of these, the ones which have had most enduring
appeal for contemporary Malay viewers are the comedies, especially the Bujang Lapok
series, starring P. Ramlee, Aziz Sattar and S. Shamsuddin.
But comedy poses a few problems for inclusion in the montage. This is because much of
the humour in ‘golden age’ Malay films was verbal in nature. Subtitling the dialogue into
English might have been one solution, but humour can be intransigent to translation.
Secondly, even if subtitles were used, it would have been difficult to read them,
considering the spaced-apart layout of the three screens. It would also mean restrictions
on editing possibilities, as the subtitled scenes would have to be shown on all three
screens simultaneously to facilitate maximum legibility. Thirdly, the use of dialogue
might disrupt the pacing of the movie, especially for jokes that require a lengthy set-up
before the punchline. Tan’s montage sequence featured two songs and five instances of
brief dialogue. None of these was amusing.14
15
The omission of comedies however, did not mean that there was no humour present.
Unintentional comedy was provided by the horror films, with their use of jump cuts to
denote human-to-monster transformations, as well as crude latex makeup that seemed
more comically grotesque than genuinely terrifying. Production design was also an
occasion for laughter, with the tacky bunian chariot and obvious studio sets with painted
skies. Furthermore, some of the acting was also cartoonishly exaggerated, especially
those by the victims in the horror films.
The absence of the verbal also meant that some of the icons of Malay cinema were
deprived of the very distinctive speech which was so integral to their performances and
personas. We did not hear Siti Tanjung Perak and her untamable Indonesian accent, Neng
Yatimah, the ‘Queen of Tears’, bemoaning her fate with a broken voice, Ahmad Nisfu
and his wheezing constipations, Mak Dara perfecting her evil mother-in-law role with her
raspy, emasculating putdowns. Notably, none of these actors appeared in the montage.
But how does one theorise the ‘iconic’ in cinema?15Although the subject of iconicity has
not been well-developed in Malay cinema, I would venture that the genesis of the iconic
depends not only on the moment of its appearance but its subsequent reproduction in
popular culture—via quotation, mimicry, homage and parody. Some of the well-known
iconic moments in cinema would include Buster Keaton hanging from a clock’s hands,
King Kong on the Empire State building, the shower scene in Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and
Robert De Niro’s ‘You talkin’ to me?’ mirror soliloquy in Taxi Driver.
16
The ‘iconic’ is thus difficult to qualify, as its definition is as multifarious as what
constitutes expressions of ‘popular culture’. If I were to devise a list of ‘iconic moments’,
based on conversations with others, readings from e-groups, as well as my own purely
subjective taste, the following would be included:
From Anakku Sazali (1956): P. Ramlee acting both the parts of father and son, with the
son claiming that his waywardness was due to the father’s neglect; from Pendekar
Bujang Lapok (1959): the three bachelors learning the Jawi alphabet, P. Ramlee trying to
meditate in a cemetery; from Nujum Pak Belalang (1959): Bat Latiff preparing coffee for
his father from soot scraped from a wok, P. Ramlee calling out for his son when faced
with a riddle; from Seniman Bujang Lapok (1961): the three bachelors in the make-up
room, the three of them again on the production set; from Ali Baba Bujang Lapok (1961):
P. Ramlee uttering a rude chant in Javanese to open the entrance to the cave, Sarimah
leading the blindfolded Apek through the streets of Baghdad; from Sri Mersing (1961):
Noordin Ahmad reciting the pantun with the haunting first lines ‘Kajang Pak Malau
kajang berlipat’; from Ibu Mertuaku (1962): Mak Dara telling Zaiton that she would
never let the latter marry a musician, P. Ramlee driving a pair of forks into his eyes; from
Labu dan Labi (1962): Udo Omar punishing P. Ramlee and M. Zain by making them do
the ketuk ketampi—squats while pulling their own ears.
But the issue of what selection criteria to utilize ultimately depends on the question: who
is the target audience for the montage? While someone familiar with Malay films might
17
bemoan the absence of key iconic scenes, the decoding of these scenes would require a
certain cultural capital. How is such capital acquired, and how can it be transmitted?
The Absent Mother
My first contact with ‘golden age’ Malay films, on television, was invariably mediated by
my mother. As a child, she would accompany me as we watched the films, providing a
running commentary as the events unfolded on screen. In many ways, her frequent
interjections emphasized the polysemy of these films.
Firstly, she would identify the stars in the films, with some brief biography appended (S.
Roomai Noor married Siput Sarawak and then Umi Kalthum; their children were Anita
Sarawak and Noor Kumalasari respectively), as well as some comments on their star
personas (Sarimah had ‘the body of a violin’, Latifah Omar was always ‘bullied’ by Siti
Tanjung Perak, Kasmah Booty’s shoes created a whole trend of imitative footwear).
Secondly, she would bring my attention to the locations (like the beach at Sembawang in
Madu Tiga (1964), the Jalan Ampas Studios in Seniman Bujang Lapok). The
‘background’ or studium was also explicated: that style of beehive was known as
‘powder ball’, in cabaret halls you could buy tickets for dancing partners, that car model
was known as ‘Morris Minor’, women used to keep wads of money in their brassieres…
18
Third was a commentary on shifts in social practices and values: in her opinion the 50’s
and 60’s were much more liberal times: women wore figure-hugging kebayas, there were
references to racehorse-betting and drinking, and there was more on-screen physical
contact between opposite sexes. As a matter of fact, a popular history of Malays in
Singapore often refers to a creeping conservatism as a result of Islamic revivalist
movements in the late 1970’s. However, any analysis of the prevailing social mores of
that period through its films has to make a distinction between Malay society in general,
and Malay society in Singapore at that time. It is entirely possible that Singapore, as an
urban centre, the idealized ‘New York of Malaysia’ envisioned by the late Tunku Abdul
Rahman, claimed an exceptional status for itself, as a ‘cultural outlier’, with looser codes
of moral surveillance.16
Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding (1980) presents a framework for analyzing the multiaccentuality of televisual texts, categorizing audience responses as dominant, negotiated
and oppositional (Hall, 1980, p134-138). My mother’s readings of Malay films can be
characterized as ‘negotiated’, as it vacillates between an absorption in diegetic elements
and a critical approach to its extra-diegetic dimensions. Much of this has to do with the
migration of the text from the cinema screen to television, which allowed for a more
distracted, fragmentary mode of viewing, interrupted by advertisements and channelsurfing.
This foregrounding of extra-diegetic codes thus prompted my mother to shift her
attention to the historical, cultural and even political ‘accents’ of the films that she
19
watched with me. The ‘absent motherland’ latent in the films was communicated to me,
along with its legacy of disinheritance. My mother was born in 1951, 14 years before
Separation; I was born in 1977, 12 years after. The Malay films that we watched provided
a link not only between our respective generations but between two sets of histories. As I
watched Tan’s montage on the three screens, I wanted my mother to watch those images
by my side, to entertain my most naïve questions; not just ‘what is this story about?’ but
‘who is that?’, ‘where was this?’ and ‘why are they doing that?’.17
Conclusion
If indeed the issue is about cultural memory, then why did the museum not engage a
filmmaker who is more familiar with the filmic material? At this point, perhaps the term
‘cultural memory’ should be examined. As I have outlined above, the ‘cultural memory’ I
described was exclusive to the Singapore Malay community, its transmission restricted
within internal inter-generational networks.
Rather than blaming it on the museum’s oversight, I will argue that the engagement of
Royston Tan to create the montage was critical to an attempt to expand the definition of
‘cultural memory’. Firstly, it was clear from the presentation format (the three screens)
that Tan was expected to create a new aesthetic product—a film installation, and not a
documentary. Secondly, it is highly unlikely that non-Malay audiences of the montage
will be privy to much of the extra-diegetic subtext mentioned above; in this case Tan
20
became the first test-audience for the filmic material. His final selection would then tend
to reflect the tastes of a universalized audience which lacks a culturally-informed
interpretative lens.
Thirdly, the project is an attempt to bridge two moments in the history of Singapore
cinema. In his introduction to Singapore Cinema, Raphael Millet notes:
“The blockbuster movies of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s were almost
entirely made by Chinese producers and directors, and featured Chinese
casts. For a cinema viewer who would know Singapore only through its
movies, it would have seemed like the country’s population changed from
Malay to Chinese overnight…Singapore cinema had also completely
disappeared by the late 1970’s and was nonexistent throughout the
1980’s. Such a situation is unheard of in the history of cinema. It was
rather like a coma, a rather long one.” (Millet, 2006)
Can cultural memory also become national memory? 18 Tan has been both criticized and
lauded as a visual stylist, and his montage revealed a tendency to valorize moments of
elaborately art-directed mise-en-scenes and Georges Méliès-type ‘movie magic’. He has
however, revealed in an interview the influences of the ‘golden age’ Malay films on his
new ‘getai musical’ 881: “Maybe I was affected by the National Museum project for 881.
The special effects of the Malay films, the magical feeling where you just act and out of
nowhere you start to sing—that’s a trigger for 881.19”
21
Perhaps it is time for contemporary Singaporean filmmakers to tap on the cinematic
heritage of the ‘golden age’ of Malay films, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. Tan’s
approach to his material was primarily formalist and aesthetic, but it represents a
beginning. After all, when his montage shifted to colour, this not only signified the
advent of technology, but also the promise of a non-monoethnic Singapore cinema.
While the ‘golden age’ films require certain interpretative competencies to be fully
appreciated, this can be solved by more scholarship in the field (as well as translations of
existing research), addressed to a non-Malay readership. The recent donation of 90
classic Cathay-Keris Malay film titles to the Asian Film Archive carries with it the
potential of restoring and perhaps distributing remastered versions.20 At the end of
Royston’s Tan’s Mother, the narrator says, “I saw uncle. I saw sis. I saw aunt. I saw the
old neighbours. I have seen all that I wanted to see. But I did not see you Mum.” But
absence does not necessarily mean death. Tan’s contribution to the National Museum
Film Gallery is an attempt to ensure that Singapore cinema, after its long sleep, does not
emerge an amnesiac.
REFERENCES
Ahmad Sarji. (1999) P. Ramlee: Erti Yang Sakti. Subang Jaya, Malaysia: Pelanduk
Publications (M) Sdn Bhd.
Barthes, Roland. (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill &
Wang.
Hall, Stuart. (1980) ‘Encoding/decoding’, in Culture, Media, Language. London:
Hutchinson pp. 128-38
22
Harding, James and Ahmad Sarji. (2002) P. Ramlee: The Bright Star. Subang Jaya
Malaysia: Pelanduk Publications (M) Sdn Bhd.
Jamil Sulong. (1990) Kaca Permata: Memoir Seorang Pengarah. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan
Bahasa and Pustaka Kementrian Pendidikan.
Lacaba, Jose F. (ed) (2000) The Films of ASEAN. Philippines: ASEAN Committee on
Culture and Information
Lim, K.T. (1991) Cathay: 55 Years of Cinema. Singapore: Landmark Books,
M Amin. (1998) Layar Perak dan Sejarahnya. Shah Alam, Selangor: Fajar Bakti Sdn
Bhd
Millet, Raphael. (2005) Singapore Cinema. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet
Mohd Zamberi A. Malek and Aimi Jaffar (2005). Malaysian Films: The Beginning.
Selangor: FINAS
Uhde, Jan and Yvonne Ng Udhe. (2000) Latent Images: Film in Singapore, Singapore:
Oxford University Press
Van der Heide, William. (2002) Malaysian Cinema, Asian Film: Border Crossings and
National Culture. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press
White, Timothy R. (1997) ‘When Singapore was Southeast Asia’s Hollywood’, The Arts
5: 21-24, Dec
Yung, S.S. & Chan K.B. (2003) ‘Leisure, Pleasure and Consumption: Ways of
Entertaining Oneself’, in Past Times: A Social History of Singapore: 153-182, edited by
Chan Kwok Bun and Tong Chee Kong. Singapore: Times Editions
http://www.shaw.com.sg/shawstory/shawstory.htm The Shaw Organization, 2001.
NOTES
1
From http://www.nationalmuseum.sg/
Chua Beng Huat (2003) ‘Multiculturalism in Singapore: instrument of social control’ Race and Class
44(3): 58-77
2
3
Jan Uhde and Yvonne Ng Uhde (2000) Latent Images: Film in Singapore Oxford: Oxford University
Press, p. 23
23
4
Pitt, Kuan Wah (1988) Wayang : a history of Chinese opera in Singapore Singapore : MPH
5
Tan Sooi Beng (1993) Bangsawan: A Social and Stylistic History of Popular Malay Opera. Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press
6
Film historians like Uhde and Hamzah Hussein, however, recognize that the Malay film industry was a
product of a multicultural endeavour: Chinese capital, Indian directors and Malay casts. However, as this
essay is concerned with the films as texts, I use the dominant language and the ethnicities of its performers
to characterize the films as ‘Malay’.
Saw Swee-Hock (1969) ‘Population Trends in Singapore, 1819-1967’, Journal of Southeast Asian History
X, no 1:41, Table 2
7
8
Jan Uhde and Yvonne Ng Uhde (2000) Latent Images: Film in Singapore Oxford: Oxford University
Press, p. 26-28
9
Lily Zubaidah Rahim (1998) The Singapore dilemma: the political and educational marginality of the
Malay community. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press
This film is actually quite obscure to most Malay Singaporeans, as it is hardly shown on television. Tan’s
use of footage from the film in his montage might hopefully provoke research into the relationships
between the ‘golden age’ films and nationalist texts.
10
Anak Pontianak is part of Shaw’s collection of pontianak movies, which were made to rival those of
Cathay-Keris. Hence they do not feature the quintessential pontianak, Maria Menado, who was a member
of the Cathay-Keris stable of stars.
11
The first Malay colour film was Cathay-Keris’ Buloh Perindu (1953). Raja Bersiong was the ‘most
expensive movie Shaw ever produced; it was also a monumental failure at the box-office.’ (Uhde, 2000,
p27)
12
Hang Tuah was also credited with the line ‘Tak akan Melayu hilang di dunia’ (The Malays will never
vanish from the face of the earth), often appropriated by ethno-nationalists in Malaysia. In the context of
the decline of the Malay film industry in Singapore, the line acquires an ironic ring.
13
14
The snippets of dialogue are as follows:
1) Lyrics to ‘Nak Dara Rindu’
2) P Ramlee: Siapakah kau? Shariff Dol: Jikalau engkau ingin tahu… (P Ramlee: Who are you? Shariff
Dol: If you want to know…)
3) Villager: Orang Minyak? (Oily Man?)
4) Hashimah Yon: Kau akan menerima pembalasan atas apa yang kau telah lakukan (You will receive
retribution for what you have done)
5) Haj Sattar: Saya akan mencipta hantu di hadapan tuan (I will create a creature in front of you)
6) Hang Jebat: Siapa nama kau? (What is your name?) Hang Tuah: Hang Tuah.
7) Lyrics to ‘Joget Pahang’
The use of ‘iconic’ here is not to be confused with C. S. Peirce’s triadic technical division of signs, into
the icon, index and symbol. This is because semiotic film analyses (notably Deleuze) often employ Peirce’s
theories. The term ‘iconic’ here refers to ‘having characteristics of someone or something admired or
revered.’
15
Songs like ‘Di Singapura’ by Julia and ‘Cermin Singapura’ by Salbiah in the 60’s had already identified
Singapore as somewhat decadent, a place where ‘youths held hands freely’ and entered ‘drinking joints’.
16
24
17
For an enlightening discussion of films as social history, see Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin. (2006)
Films as Social History - P. Ramlee's "Seniman Bujang Lapok" and Malays in Singapore (1950s-60s)
available at http://epress.nus.edu.sg/nhb/rst/rst.php?op=view_metadata&id=17
Uhde details some of the problems involved with both Singapore and Malaysia claiming the ‘golden age’
Malay films as part of their cinematic heritage (Uhde, 2000, pp10-11)
18
19
From an interview done with Tan by Ong Keng Sen for the ‘120’ Project by TheatreWorks.
‘Preservation of Cathay’s Malay classic films’ The Straits Times, 6 September 2007. Says Suhaimi
Rafdi, President, Cathay Organisation Holdings Ltd, “We are glad to be donating our Malay titles to the
Asian Film Archive. This collaboration ensures that the films will be kept in conditions which are the most
appropriate to preserve them. It is through institutions such as the Asian Film Archive who have the
expertise that we are able to ensure the longevity of these classic films, which are so much a part of
Singapore’s film industry history. We also hope that through this initiative, there will be renewed interest in
such classic films. And perhaps even interest to remake some of these titles and adapt them to present
times.”
20
25