Selubung is
a Malay word which translates to the veil or head covering that is particularly
worn by Muslim women. It is also the title of a 1992 drama flick directed by
Malaysian-born, London-trained, female filmmaker Shuhaimi Baba. The film tells
a sophisticatedly unconventional tale of a young woman (Mastura) on a journey
of maturing into responsible adulthood through the love for a childhood friend
(E.J.) the love for her male employer (Kamal) which is persistent in courting
her, and the passion for aiding Palestinians in their plight.
Shuhaimi
Baba is a noteworthy woman filmmaker whose works embodies the attitude, spirit
and vision of Mahathirism in 1980s and 1990s Malaysia when the country was
still under the authoritarian leadership of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. The
New Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented in 1971 in response to the racial
riots of May 1969. One of NEP’s aims is to increase the level of Malay
participation in the economy (“Mahathir”, 2012, para. 7) and the solution was
to financially-support needy Malays to further their studies overseas. Shuhaimi
Baba was one of the many Malays that were sent to study abroad by the
government after 1971 (Khoo, 2006, p. 128). Therefore, filmmakers such as
Shuhaimi Baba emerged with issues and themes concerning the culture shock faced
by the children of NEP.
With
regards to Selubung, it is apparent
that Shuhaimi Baba is boldly feminist in her approach (Muthalib, 2005). This is
where I discuss the issue of women representation concentrating on the film’s
themes of Islam and modernity in terms of the two kinds of 1990s Malay women
portrayed by Mastura and E.J.
Mastura,
represents the independent, highly-educated and fluent English/Malay-speaking modern
Malay woman which dresses in Western-style clothing. However, Mastura does not
go overboard in embracing modernity and balances it with her ethnic identity
seeing that she would frequently return to her hometown in Terrengganu despite
having a hectic working life of being an engineer and volunteering at RESCAID.
In fact, the opening sequence of the movie with a superimposed title,
‘Terengganu, 1969’, of an old man chanting a song at the ocean with the
accompaniment of a gamelan orchestra in the presence of three children had
indicated that this would be a reoccurring ‘childhood’ scene. The old man
appears to be Mastura’s godfather thus it can be inferred that the little girl
standing next to him is Mastura, while the other children are E.J. and Halim
with reasonable speculation (Heide, 2002, p. 220).
Whereas, E.J embraces
Islam to the point of being extreme.She is influenced by the Islamic teachings
that completely reject western sexual and moral values in which Brother Musa, a
member of a worldwide Islamic ‘fundamentalist’ missionary group known as the
Tabligh (Heide, 2002, p.220), aggressively propagates. She neglected her
studies and failed to complete her education in Perth for the sake of marrying
Brother Musa, believing that it is sinful for the wife to be more educated than
the husband. She also has no qualms becoming Brother Musa’s second wife and
sharing him with another woman though she is visibly upset that she is
forbidden from mingling with Mastura and her friends. However, she reverts back
to being a moderate-practicing Muslim after the traumatic episode of her baby
dying at the hands of Brother Musa’s mentally-ill first wife, Hani.
To sum everything up, it
is tricky to find a positively balanced representation of Malay woman in modern
times as she would need to be able to balance her ethnic identity so as to
resist homogenous globalizing cultures while simultaneously freeing her from
any kind of patriarchal constrictions: it is to paradoxically present her as an
individual living as part of a community (Levitin, Plessis & Raoul, 2003,
p. 234).Nevertheless, Shuhaimi
Baba succeeded in presenting Mastura as such and that makes her the desired
woman representation at the end of the film. I recommend reading up on the plot
before watching the movie to ensure a better comprehension of the string of
events despite the muddled editing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heide, W. (2002). Malaysian cinema, Asian film border crossings and
national cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. P.221
Khoo, G. C.
(2006). Representation of Modern Malay Women of the 1990s. Reclaiming Adat:
Contemporary Malaysian Film and Literature (). Vancouver, Canada: UBC
Press.
Mahathir: New Economic Policy Benefits
non-Malays too – See more at:
http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Malaysia/Story/A1Story20120224-330048.html#sthash.Twq98dSQ.dpuf.
(2012, February 12). News Straits Times,
p. 1
.
.
Muthalib, H. (2005, October 13). Voices of Malaysian Cinema. . Retrieved
, from http://criticine.com/feature_article.php?id=17
Levitin, J., Plessis, J., & Raoul, V. (2003). Womens Films through a
Postcolonial Lens. Women
Filmmakers: Refocusing (). :
Routledge.
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