Abstract
This chapter examines representations of masculinity in relation to notions of temporality in two Malaysian feature films, Budak Kelantan (dir. Wan Azli Wan Jusoh, 2008) and Bunohan (dir. Dain Said, 2011), which are both set in the east coast state of Kelantan. Budak Kelantan is about the reunion of two childhood friends in Kuala Lumpur who have taken different paths in life. One is highly moralistic while the other has strayed from the ‘right path’, and much of the plot is driven by the former trying to help the latter regain his integrity. Bunohan, which draws on elements from kickboxing, gangster and fantastic films, and family melodramas, depicts the homecoming of three estranged brothers who inevitably become trapped in a tangled web of greed, vengeance and violence. In their critique of modernity and representation of marginalised working-class youth masculinities, both films utilise and invoke Kelantan’s traditional art forms. Budak Kelantan deploys dikir barat (a traditional musical form) as a stylistic element to accentuate moments of masculine emotional anxiety and nostalgic desire for traditional kampung life. Bunohan intricately interweaves Kelantan’s art forms with traditional magic and healing and mystical folklore. In this respect, both films induce a nostalgic longing for a place that has been lost due to rural–urban migration. Through a close reading of the two films, I argue that both offer forms of counter-narrative through their representations of troubled and anxious masculinities (and the women onto whom they are projected or who are forced to mediate them), while at the same time reflecting on and critiquing the reified gender binaries born of Malaysia’s Islamisation, Western modernity and linear, homogeneous time.
This chapter is based on a part of my PhD thesis, ‘Moral tale or fin-de-siècle tragedy? Budak Kelantan and Bunohan’. See Norman Yusoff (2013: 160–204).
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Notes
- 1.
Although Sufism is the earliest version of Islam that arrived in the Malay Archipelago in the fourteenth century, this representation may now be seen as contesting the dominant version of Islam practised by the Malaysian state—a form of ‘legalist Islam’ promoted through scripturalist orthodoxy. Sufism tends to be censured by the Islamic bureaucracy in Malaysia. For further discussion of this, see Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid (2011).
- 2.
Kelantan’s Thai (Siamese) community (mostly Buddhist) previously constituted 1% of the state’s population (Mohamed Yusoff 1987). As oral traditions indicate, many of the Thai settlements are over 100 years old. In fact, in some places, Thai villagers are known to predate their Malay neighbours.
- 3.
One of the biggest and longest-running controversies that PAS has been involved in is the question of sharia law and the party’s stated aim of implementing hudud punishments should it ever come to power in the country. PAS’s critics and opponents claim that the form and content of PAS’s hudud laws are problematic and questionable to say the least, and that hudud punishments (which include cutting off hands, whipping and stoning to death) are barbaric and cruel and go against the fundamental principle of justice within Islam. See Helen Ting Mu Hung (2016).
- 4.
Together with UMNO, PAS joined the Perikatan Nasional government (2020–2021), following the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government.
- 5.
Fadli Al-Akiti’s claim that Kelantanese men are sexist or chauvinist appears to have been based upon popular everyday discourse in Malaysia. To date, I have not been able to locate any research or studies conducted on this particular topic.
- 6.
Sufism is a branch of Islam associated with spirituality and mysticism and the expression of Islam’s inner essence and esoteric aspects as distinguished from its external and exoteric aspects, as manifested in absolute love of the divine. See Tanvir Anjum (2006).
- 7.
Malaysia’s Islamisation race (which features UMNO and PAS, and lately Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia) has led to the development of a vast array of laws and institutions set up with the aim of ‘caring’ for the welfare of society; however this has largely resulted in the holier-than-thou moral policing of the lives of both Muslim and non-Muslim citizens.
- 8.
As Raewyn Connell notes, the term ‘masculinity’ is used more in its plural form ‘masculinities’ because the inference is that there is not one but many socially constructed definitions of being a man.
- 9.
I borrow Khoo Gaik Cheng’s (2007: 56) idea when she discusses Yasmin Ahmad’s Gubra in relation to Sufi philosophy.
- 10.
The ‘time-image’, which refers to some forms of film-making that emerged after the Second World War, describes films that are capable of producing an image of pure time, liberated from movement, that is, a direct image of time. This term normally encompasses films in which the passing of time cannot be accurately measured and in which images of the past—especially in the form of memories—are not clearly distinguishable from images of the present or of the future. See Gilles Deleuze (1985: 275).
- 11.
When interviewed by a local daily, Ana Balqis and her colleague Abu Hassan Hasbullah (both academics from Universiti Malaya at the time) responded to the film by making some unsound commentaries. They questioned the film as ‘puzzling, confusing and torturous’ to viewers. Ana further commented on the film’s inaccurate depiction of the sociocultural reality of Kelantan, which seemed in contrast with her own experience and worldview (as a Kelantanese). See Wahiduzzaman (2012).
- 12.
The cinematic consciousness that emerges from this dynamic is very different from the transcendental subject of the cinematic apparatus, which is always the same and is predicated on one type of perception. In this respect, a cinematic consciousness that accommodates multiple perspectives at the same time challenges binary thinking. See Deleuze (1983: 76).
- 13.
This is implied by the director Dain Said in the video, ‘BUNOHAN “Di Sebalik Tabir | The Making Of” FULL’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbIBYOojWyM. Accessed 30 Sep 2020.
- 14.
Rajuk is a form of sulking that can be seen as a melodramatic emotional expression. Traditionally, it is quite acceptable for a person to feel hurt by the tiniest slight, real or imagined, effected by someone close. The physical response of the hurt party is to look mortally wounded and withdraw from the person who has erred. This person will then show due remorse and proceed to pujuk (coax) the rajuk person to forgive and forget. This emotive mode, which is often found in old Malay literary genres, for example in poems (pantun) and epics (hikayat), is also evident in early Malay films. According to Anuar Nor Arai (2002), rajuk is an important phenomenon in the sociopolitical lives of Malays, both male and female. Culturally speaking, this disposition is often regarded as feminine, but in reality both men and women may express rajuk. See Anuar Nor Arai (2002); Muhammad Haji Salleh (2011: 36–37).
- 15.
This tendency parallels those of many Malay literary texts and genres in which elements of duka nestapa (woe) seem to be omnipresent in the jungles, villages and also in the palaces. The emphasis on healing (particularly towards the end) is reminiscent of the literary texts, which hardly evoke, according to Muhammad Haji Salleh (2008: 198), ‘a Greek catharsis but a deep nestapa that brings along an insight into human existence. As conclusions end with positive episodes, the dark tales are enlightened with therapy and consolation.’
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Yusoff, N. (2021). Genre, Gender and Temporal Critique in Budak Kelantan and Bunohan. In: Ibrahim, Z., Richards, G., King, V.T. (eds) Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia. Asia in Transition, vol 13. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4568-3_17
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