{"id":27560,"date":"2006-07-20T02:36:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-20T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27560"},"modified":"2024-03-14T13:40:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T05:40:06","slug":"where-have-all-the-commies-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/artikel\/2006\/07\/where-have-all-the-commies-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Where have all the Commies Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

After watching Amir Muhammad’s Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em> l remembered I\nhad a copy of In Search of the\nRevolution: A Brief Biography of Chin Peng<\/em>, by historian CC Chin. I rescued\nthis from a pile of dusty paper in my room several days later. It begins with a\nflourish:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There is no simple explanation\nfor someone who, during times of tempestuous ideological struggle, steered\nswiftly enough to remain at the helm for decade after decade. The old question —\nof whether it was the times that produced the heroes, or the heroes that\ncreated the history — cannot help us to comprehend the success or failure of\nsuch a historical figure.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cursory examination of the text\nreveals Chin as a fan; in providing an account of the Baling Talks, Chin Peng\nis described hyperbolically as having the “graceful bearing of a refined\nand scholarly gentleman”. One doesn’t expect refinement and scholarship\nlikely traits of a guerrilla leader fresh from the jungle, but expectations\naside, Chin doesn’t qualify his impressions. The text is average propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also better at history than any\ntext currently used to teach school-going persons about the period. The most\nin-depth information about the Emergency I received was in Fifth Form, the last\nyear of secondary school, where students aren’t really receiving facts as\nmemorising them to pass Sejarah. My powers of recollection are feeble, so I did\nfeebly for the subject. I remember the Baling Talks, New Villages, and\ncommunist demons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am twenty. My generation has the\nsingular privilege of receiving Alias\nChin Peng: My Side of History<\/em>, his biography via Ian Ward and Norma\nMiraflor, even if we don’t actually know anything concrete about the Empire’s\nPublic Enemy No. 1 — besides the fact that he was the Devil incarnate: a\ngangster-boss-type character plotting the fall of Malaya from a smoky and\nred-lit board-room in Thailand. This last image is courtesy of a television\nminiseries I was forced to watch during National Service. It featured a\nbadly-animated train being explosively derailed by villainous Chinese men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avoiding violence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amir appears to have developed a\nlove for talking heads: in The Year of\nLiving Vicariously<\/em> (2005), a serious adventure in Jakarta during election\ntime that featured a split screen and static interviews, this infatuation was a\ncause of deathly monotony. His third feature-length documentary, in contrast,\nis interrupted several times by humorous and cheesily-arranged songs, written\nby Jerome Kugan and performed by the excellent Zalila Lee and her swaying,\nmuhibbah-clad chorus, about malaria, Identity Card, and Malaysia’s lush natural\nresources — a thinly-veiled (but immensely adorable) device designed to break\nthe stream of endless interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories themselves are\nrewarding; a broad portrait of lives lived: a Methodist church-goer belting a\nhymn; a young woman standing out in a line of other young women selling pamelos\ntelling the camera about her hopes of business expansion; a charcoal factory\nowner stately spreading his arms, saying: “These big igloos are kilns\nwhere the wood becomes the charcoal … The Japanese all come to Malaysia to\nbuy our high-quality charcoal … I hope you enjoyed this tour of my charcoal\nfactory.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This last sequence comes after the Japanese invasion of Malaya; Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em> travels through the towns through which Chin Peng passed in chronological order. The subject matter is treated almost incidentally; the stories that surface about the war and subsequent\u00a0 Emergency are poignant without a specific Chin Peng connection: a\u00a0baker making lotus-flower-shaped buns explaining how these confections began as gifts from a mother to her imprisoned son; a sexagenarian laughing at the memory of being visited, as a boy, by a seductive communist agent (“Oo, Lawa!”) who persuades him to become a conspirator; a woman in the Peace Villages of Southern Thailand\u00a0 (final resting place of the Malayan Communist Party), rocking a baby in a sarong and saying: “I have no regrets”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parliamentarian reactions to Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em> included a\nsimple “It was boring”; this is an obvious reference to the film’s\nlack of burning trains. Amir goes out of his way to avoid violence: the most\nvisually bizarre seconds of the film take place with the caption: ‘Kuala\nLumpur’: we are told how Chin Peng catches up with party triple-traitor Lai Te and\nexecutes him; the camera averts its eyes, searching furtively through a bed of\nlallang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To brand the film\n“Amateurish,” because of its lack of pyrotechnics, as our Minister of\nCulture, Arts and Heritage ostensibly does, is immature: it misses the point\ncompletely. What should matter in depictions of history is not the voyeuristic\nfetish of gore; what mattered during then, as it does now, almost 50 years into\nnationhood, is that there were people — Malaysians — involved. Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em> tells us this;\nfilms like Adman Salleh’s Paloh<\/em>\n(2003) and Aziz M Othman’s Leftenan Adnan<\/em>\n(2000), with their dramatic and comparatively lavish depictions of warfare,\ndon’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lessons of history<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that I should know anything\nabout history. CC Chin is correct when he remarks that: “There is no\nsimple explanation,” for Chin Peng, de facto leader of the Malayan\nCommunist Party, but a more accurate statement, I think, would be that there is\nno explanation — at least: none easily available and readily consumable by\nthose who, like me, have no recollection before the 1980s. I have not read Alias: Chin Peng<\/em>, and rare is the\n20-plus-year-old who has, cover to cover. We have little to fall on but the\nominous proclamations our schoolteachers fed us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malaysian history textbooks begin\nwith the disclaimer that everything besides statistics and dates are\ninterpretation, and that even these are not infallible. I’m sorry I can’t quote\nverbatim. I cannot find my copy of Sejarah Tingkatan 5. The nature of history\ntexts to be resold second-hand, cycled out of the syllabus, then lost is\nperhaps a wistful metaphor for the malleability of the past; but it is also a\nsinister reminder of the social engineering to which young Malaysians are\nsubject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In these texts, Chin Peng is invariably\nportrayed in the negative: a godless Enemy of the State. Not much else. The\n1969 race riots are simply referred to as the May 13, 1969 Incident — there is\nno elaboration. This kind of crafted ignorance of the collective Malaysian\nconsciousness — of racial dynamics, religion and other (to borrow an Amirism)\n‘thorny’ issues — may already be irreparable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em> ban is internal. A post on the film’s blog,\ndated June 27, informs us that the official VCD and DVD has been released:\n“In that bastion of democracy and artistic expression, Singapore,”\nAmir says. “Alas! Possession of this VCD and DVD in Malaysia is a criminal\noffence… you can be fined up to RM50 000 or jailed up to five years. Don’t\nsay I didn’t warn you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that the film is The Last Communist<\/em> more than Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em>, the fact that\nit opened at the Berlin Film Festival and is touring the world, are the results\nof an act of deliberate and selective censorship, meant to keep a selected\nslice of humanity (Malaysians) in the dark about a selected part of history\n(Malaysian History). If I remember, there is a classical aphorism about\nlearning the lessons of history. I don’t suppose we’ve quite learnt them yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a separate village, nearby <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em>‘s most telling moment is when the narrative stops at the Sultan Idris Teachers’ College in Tanjung Malim, and Amir quizzes a student about communism. “Communism is bad, really,” she answers. It is a profile shot, and she appears to be reading a dissertation behind her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a later interview, in the\nPeace Village, towards the end of the film’s 90 minutes. An old communist\nsoldier is talking about how the community is organised: “Our Muslim\ncomrades are in a separate village, nearby,” he says. “They are our\ncomrades; just that we are of different religions, and this is a sensitive\nissue, so we do this so that there are no conflicts.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chewed on the implications this\nfact presented — the Malayan Communist Party was far from being callous about\nreligion, for one — for some time. It was an edifying experience. I also\nrealised that the Tanjung Malim teacher would probably never receive this\nrevelation. “Communists are godless, cruel, and want chaos,” she\ncontinues, her textbook statements lost, perhaps never to be seen here:\n“Communism is based on social injustice, unlike democracies, like\nMalaysia.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lelaki Komunis Terakhir<\/em> is available on VCD and DVD in Singapore. Amir says: “Possession of this VCD or DVD in Malaysia is a criminal offence since it is banned. If you are caught with it, you can be fined up to RM50,000 or jailed up to five years. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zedeck Siew played a communist in a workshop play presented by Five Arts Centre last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 20.07.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After watching Amir Muhammad’s Lelaki Komunis Terakhir l remembered I had a copy of In Search of the Revolution: A Brief Biography of Chin Peng, by historian CC Chin. I rescued this from a pile of dusty paper in my room several days later. It begins with a flourish: “There is no simple explanation for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7765,7767,7782,7773],"tags":[4239,245,4240,4244,4246,4192,4247,3774,530,3974,4227,4238,2705,223,2772,4241,4250,910,534,4229,4249,4217,3967,4248,233,4245,4242,4236,4243,4013],"language":[7785],"writer":[7956],"class_list":["post-27560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-penapisan","category-filem","category-sejarah","category-muzikal","tag-adman-salleh","tag-amir-muhammad","tag-aziz-m-othman","tag-baling","tag-baling-talks","tag-biography","tag-cc-chin","tag-chin-peng","tag-chinese","tag-communism","tag-communist","tag-democracy","tag-documentary","tag-film","tag-history","tag-ian-ward","tag-identity-card","tag-japanese","tag-jerome-kugan","tag-lai-te","tag-malaria","tag-malaya","tag-malayan-communist-party","tag-methodist","tag-musical","tag-new-village","tag-norma-miraflor","tag-tanjung-malim","tag-thailand","tag-zalila-lee","language-inggeris","writer-zedeck-siew-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27560"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38582,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27560\/revisions\/38582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27560"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27560"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}