Shooting ourselves in the foot again (and again!)

Biro Tatanegara (or the National Indoctrination Bureau) was established in 1974 during Tun Razak's tenure. But it took around ten years to evolve into the sinister operation that has been getting a load of negative publicity in recent days.

The fact that BTN is an adjunct of the Prime Minister's Department makes it a convenient mechanism for the systematic dissemination of the official doctrine throughout the rank and file of the civil and diplomatic services. BTN also ensures that the academic bureaucracy adheres to Umno's official doctrine of Ketuanan Melayu and loyalty to the government.

Some who have been processed through the BTN experience and survived with their minds intact and independent report that the BTN's agenda is insidiously racist and deliberately divisive. Unthinking conformity is what the Biro Tatanegara is really all about.

The desire to imprint the rulers' ideology on all subjects is a hallmark of every patriarchal society. After all, the words "pattern" and "paternal" share the same etymology, namely, issuing from the Pater or Father.

And isn't it true that every Father wants his children to be, above all, obedient? The Old Testament - specifically, Genesis - portrays disobedience as the Original Sin.

Fast-forward to the Digital Era where being at the cutting edge requires thinking out of the box, an adventurous and innovative spirit, and a willingness to break the rules.

Where do our BTN graduates stand in the 21st century world of instant communications and nanotech? You can invest billions in an artificial city called Cyberjaya - but, unless you import all the talent, you're not going to find many innovators emerging from local institutes of learning.


In the first place, genuflecting before your social superiors is hardly conducive to nurturing creative genius. Don't forget Tuan is a contraction of Tuhan - and a culture that compels an individual to submit to God will always extend that compulsion to submitting before God's representatives on Earth, namely the Monarchs. And, by extension, their ministers.

Talented and inspired brainiacs like Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple Computers), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google), and Mark Zuckerberg (originator of Facebook) aren't the type who can handle too much protocol - unless you're referring to computer protocols.

Indeed, a distinguishing feature of cybernetic wizards is their disdain for red-tape and formality. Imagine the fun the pioneers of IT had naming everything from scratch. How did they come up with "mouse" for the device with which you navigate the screen? Or a name like Yahoo! for an all-purpose portal?

Let's say you're the Sultan of Selangor and you're accustomed to being addressed formally as Duli Yang Maha Mulia Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Al-Haj (best to leave out the interminable list of honorary titles).


So what happens when the Sultan becomes IT savvy and buys himself a Macbook? He's going to be using email and you can't possibly have such an unwieldy name in your email address. He could shorten it to sultan_idris@istana-selangor.my or perhaps even idris@istana-selangor.my - and in so doing he would be dispensing with cumbersome formality. In all probability, he would write in normal language when sending emails to his buddies, instead of adhering to traditional court language. Indeed, if he were to try his hand at internet chat, he'd probably want to conceal his royal status with a funky nick like "nicerichboy" or "hrh1."

This is what happens when human consciousness shifts from analog to digital mode. Traditionalists may scorn the way kids today have murdered language by coming up with SMS terms like :-) or LOL or 2moro or CU. But you have to admit there's a certain appeal in adopting newfangled computer symbols like @ or signing off with an ASCII heart, or adding some #hashtags to every post - and, as these new memes spread like some species of computer virus, the near-lightspeed movement of binary codes and pixels across the planet's fiber-optic highways swiftly creates a far more egalitarian social template than any theory of human evolution could ever have predicted. That's why I always ROTFLMAO whenever I hear potato-headed politicians like the education and communications ministers urging Malaysians to be "more innovative" and to prepare themselves for the rapid shift to "a knowledge-based economy."

You guys wouldn't recognize a creative genius even if one snuck up and poked you playfully in the butt. I bet you didn't realize a lot of creative geniuses look just like that troublemaker Namewee @ Wee Meng Chee whose citizenship you once wanted to revoke because he "insulted" the national anthem (as though a song could possibly be offended by some 23-year-old rapper doing an off-the-wall cover version of it).

Well, if that's what you really want, you're really gonna regret it when you finally get it. Do you know why? Because no creative genius will give a fuck how much you paid for your silk ties nor will they be too impressed by all the guff that issues from your political mouths. Keep the population dumb and conformist with your goddam BTN, if you wish to enjoy your VVIP status and your ridiculous robber baron perks. But don't you dare lament the fact that Malaysia has been left way behind every other country.

Up till now you've had it good siphoning off our collective wealth with all the natural resources the land has produced - and things got even sexier when oil was found off our coast. However, some say the oil reserves will be depleted within a few years - or the unexpected will happen and oil prices will plummet - and then how are you going to maintain your extravagant lifestyle? Revert to piracy and slave-trading?


[First published 28 November 2009, reposted 16 October 2013]

Words of Wisdom and Folly ~ a pictorial

Then make them attend your workshop or subscribe to your e-bulletin.

Then you reach the end and discover it was a complete waste of time.

If nobody's looking, you're allowed to cheat.

Happiness is overrated anyhow... don't you think?

Yelling at people also helps, if you can afford it.

In fact, you can have lots of fun just hanging around them till they go crazy.

Or just keep quiet and let the damned fool step right into the open manhole.

Well, just ask for directions, silly.

[First posted 26 May 2012]

Dreaming about a Great Beast in captivity and what it might mean (repost)

I awoke this morning from a particularly vivid dream. Usually, I don't retain dreams for very long. By the time I've washed my face and put the kettle on, they have all evaporated. However, today was different. Even as I was munching on my breakfast and doing my routine email check, followed by a quick look at Malaysiakini headlines and dipping into facebook (which is akin to opening the window and looking out at the traffic along the streets), elements of the dream kept returning to the forefront of my awareness.

So I decided I would record the dream as best I can - even though 12 hours have elapsed and I've been to the pasar malam, bought dinner and two pairs of cheap pants, got caught in a heavy downpour, enjoyed a hearty meal - and now, with a cup of coffee cooling beside me, I'm finally ready to begin...

I was in an old mansion which required a wee bit of renovation and some additional fixtures. It felt like a place I had known since childhood - or in a different lifetime. I was showing somebody around - I don't remember who, but I felt relaxed and exhilarated, the way one might feel with a new romance that's just beginning to settle in comfortably. I recall making a mental note to fill in a few cracks in the marble steps leading towards the garden, and telling my companion: "Well, now that I've been bestowed immortality, this is as good a place as any to spend eternity in. I like it here and there's always something to do; I don't think I'll ever be bored."

As we were about to take a walk around the mansion, I was startled by a loud roar approaching from a short distance. What I saw when I turned around to look was an incredible sight: a red pick-up truck was gunning up the slope pulling a huge metal cart behind it, and on the cart was the hugest bear I had ever seen. It was absolutely gigantic and as the truck came closer I realized that the bear was monstrous in size compared to the truck. It was as big as a full-grown African elephant and it was growling in fury.

The colossal bear, which was reddish gold in color, suddenly leapt from its cart onto the roof of the pick-up truck, causing the driver to swerve wildly. The truck began spinning around in a deep puddle of mud until, finally, it found some traction and sped off into the distance, with the bear still growling ferociously.

What I felt was initially a slight tinge of anxiety - more for the safety of my companion than myself - followed by intense curiosity and the sort of excitement one invariably feels when a wild beast is sighted. Then I grew upset sensing the bear's anguish at being captured by what was apparently a poacher or game hunter who was transporting his catch to be shipped off somewhere - perhaps a circus or zoo. The bear was so spectacular and magical a creature, it was horrible to witness how it was being mistreated by humans.

I suddenly felt a deep sense of sorrow sweep over me, to think that humans could behave so cruelly and callously towards a fellow creature, especially such a magnificent specimen worthy of awe and admiration. There seemed to be nothing I could do to liberate the great beast and, suddenly, the thought of spending eternity in such a barbaric world no longer appealed to me.

Nevertheless, I felt uplifted and buoyant the rest of the day, knowing that immortality was now an option. But would I choose to live forever in a reality where such hideous insensitivity can occur?

Later I began reading up about the dream symbolism of bears and found this in a Huffington Post feature dated July 2011 where "dream expert" Barbara Condron had this to say:

In the 'Universal Language of Mind' - the pioneering study conducted at the School of Metaphysics for almost 40 years - the bear is noted in indigenous cultures that honor and live close to the Earth. The bear represents the power of the warrior, often heroic and often dual, being either awake or asleep. Dreaming about bears is fairly uncommon, even though many dreams do include animals. Wild animals, like bears, are more likely to occur in someone who feels they recently spoke out of turn, acted poorly or participated in some other event where they were "untamed."

Other interpretations of bears figuring in dreams include this:

Bears are symbols of calm, stoic strength. Bears also indicate a time of introspection. If you are dreaming of a bear sleeping or hibernating, this is a message to do a little soul searching before you present an idea to the world. If a bear is chasing you, this means you are avoiding a big issue in your life, and it is time to deal with it. If the bear is standing up, this is a sign you need to defend your beliefs.

Bear has imminent domain, and when it deems that space altered, it is fully prepared to defend. Woe be to the one who provokes the wrath of the bear. In this powerfully impressive display of defense and aggression we pick up bear meanings of sovereignty, courage and themes of the warrior. To wit, in Scandinavian legend the bear was an aspect of the god Odin, and Berserkers were known to wear bearskins to enhance their ferocity in battle. Such vicious looking warriors were ensured a victory. We see more bear-dressing in the cult following of Artemis. She is a Greek huntress, and her maiden devotees would don bear dressings as a symbol of hunting prowess and power.

Does that indicate that we are about to shift into full battle mode as Malaysia prepares for the Mother of All Elections - one that will determine the fate of unborn generations? I decided to delve deeper into the mythological significance of the Bear which belongs to the Ursidae family. The word "Ursa" comes from the Latin ursus, which means bear. According to Webster's Dictionary, the Anglo-Saxon word for bear (bera) is derived from the Latin word fera meaning "wild beast" - but Wikipedia maintains that bera derives from a Germanic word meaning "brown."

Druid King Arthur Pendragon conducts
a solstice ceremony at Stonehenge

Brown, Bruno, Brawn, Bran (incidentally the name of a Celtic deity)... Interestingly, the name "Arthur" comes from the Celtic arth, related to "Ursus" - namely, "bear." From the Wikipedia entry on King Arthur: "An alternative theory, which has gained only limited acceptance among professional scholars, derives the name Arthur from Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear."

Hmmm... Arcturus! Immediately I was reminded of the Arcturus-Antares Midway Station which I first came across in Surfers of the Zuvuya by José Argüelles, who explains it thus:

Arcturus/Antares Midway Station, located interdimensionally above the planetary midpoint between Jupiter and Maldek (Asteroid Belt). Also known as “the Mother Ship” the AA Midway station is the location of the particular unit of the Galactic Federation assigned to monitoring the star system Velatropa 24.3, scene of the final dramas of the Free Will experiment.

Velatropa, Velatropa sector – Name given by advanced intelligence to galactic sector where Earth’s star and its solar system are located; specifically, quarantined zone of the “free will experiment.”

Ah so! Dreams are absolutely wonderful, aren't they - especially when you can remember them and can be bothered to dig around a bit to see what buried meanings you might unearth.

[First posted 29 October 2012]

Do you know what it means to be "royal"?

It's obvious that the feudal era is long past its sell-by date. Only a benighted handful continue to believe in the divine right of kings to behave as they will - regardless of the rights and wrongs of their actions and how their misbehavior ultimately burdens the citizens and increases the level of darkness and disease in the realm.

Small but powerful cabals of politically connected players have learnt how to get hereditary monarchs to do their bidding and in so doing, have effectively tainted and corrupted what might once have been a revered and dignified institution. In the case of Malaysia, bureaucrats and politicians gleefully imitate the indulgent lifestyles and extravagant habits of their own tribal chiefs and ceremonial rulers, surreptitiously misappropriating the sultans' traditional power and status.

Chinese pictographs are sophisticated symbols with multidimensional meanings. Take the pictogram for wang or king (left): three horizontal strokes connected by a single vertical stroke. The bottom line depicts ti, the earth; the middle line is ren, humanity; and the topmost line is tien, heaven. The single vertical axis serves as a pillar that separates heaven from earth while holding them together and uniting them, in order that humanity may flourish. Therein lies the essential meaning of kingship. If the axis is bent or infirm, heaven and earth will be out of alignment and the kingdom will collapse in disarray.

Most traditional monarchies have long been disconnected from their mystical and spiritual origins - either through excessive inbreeding, inauspicious crossbreeding, or through usurpation of the ancient quasi-divine Anunnaki bloodlines by atavistic terrestrial modified primates, infected with mind viruses that fuel their petty ego drives and turn them increasingly cruel and ruthless.

In the last few thousand years of imperialistic wars, brutal massacres and general mayhem, most of the authentic bearers of the original "golden thread" prime genetic (characterized by its high content of monoatomic gold, the elixir of longevity and immortality) have gone underground or mixed genes with the plebeians.

But in the modern era, a new form of meritocratic aristocracy has arisen from the ashes of the debauched and decadent royal bloodlines of antiquity. You will often find them in the ranks of movie stars, pop kings and queens, rock gods, best-selling authors, box-office filmmakers, weavers of fantastic dreams - outstanding individuals blessed with charisma and artistic talent, or endowed with inventive genius.

Emperor Marcus XII

Watching Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a live feed recently, I was struck by his resemblance to a young Roman emperor. Turning 33 this May, Zuckerberg exudes the confidence of a man twice his age - and who wouldn't be self-assured with an estimated net worth of nearly $64 billion?

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who gave the world a more efficient search engine, thereby facilitating easy access to information via the internet, come close to being as cash-rich as Zuckerberg. But they chose to dilute their personal stakes in the colossal corporation that grew out of their Stanford University dorm rooms, allowing sinister deep-state players convenient access to the massive databanks that constitute Google's primary resource.

Sergey Brin & Larry Page:
estimated combined net worth $75 billion

These youthful overachievers of the digital age may have no armies at their command - but they don't need them to wield enormous clout over the fate of the planet. Like Elon Musk who gave us PayPal, their visionary entrepreneurial skills have redefined what it means to be royalty in the 21st century.

Far more intelligent and street-savvy than all the monarchs of past ages put together, today's movers and shakers now find themselves in an unprecedented position to influence geopolitical trends. Given full authority to redesign and restructure the human-nature interface on a planetary scale, it's not impossible that they will embrace technology-assisted utopian ideals, and facilitate a quantum shift towards the realization of heaven on earth.

Unfortunately, the old guard stands in the way of rapid, radical change. The traditional keepers of the keys to earthly power, the warlords and usurers, are not quite ready to experience a monumental change of consciousness - and heart. They have yet to grasp the newfangled transformative idea of pronoia, which free-will astrologer-musician and poet Rob Brezsny has popularized as the antidote to paranoia. A pronoid human sees all of reality as a playground as well as a schoolhouse, set up to encourage and support our physical, mental and spiritual growth. The pronoid human experiences the entire universe as a benign conspiracy - a holographic construct that ultimately serves our own greatest good. Why so? Because each of us is a fractal of the whole, of the Unified Field of Consciousness, of All That Is (and Isn't).

Which makes us all divine humans, diabolical streak and all, entirely deserving of complete fulfillment, boundless joy, vitality, even immortality, should we so desire and deserve it. In short, the only authentic royalty is the sovereignty you reclaim for yourself, in the light of this initiation, when you awaken from your cultural trance and embrace your own eternal glory, power and kingdom (or queendom, if you happen to be a Freddie Mercury clone).

Farish A. Noor on the gory history of corporal punishment (reprise)

Punishing the Body or the Person?
Why Some Cannot Accept Physical Punishments

By Farish A. Noor ~ August 28th, 2009

In his book Torture and Modernity: Self, Society and State in Modern Iran (1994), the scholar Darius Rejali looks at how the processes of torture and punishment have evolved over the centuries in Iran, from the period of the Qajar dynasty all the way to the regime of the Shah and the Islamic Revolutionary government. He makes one interesting and important observation which remains relevant to all of those who are concerned about the use of corporal punishment and torture by modern states today: that corporal punishment dates back to the medieval era where the popular perception of punishment was that it was a public spectacle that ought to be enacted upon the body of the individual, and not the subject him/herself.

In this respect, the modes of torture and punishment that were used in pre-modern Iran were no different from the modes of punishment that were used in China, India, Africa or Europe. Throughout the world during the pre-modern era the popular understanding of punishment was that it was meant to be a form of public humiliation, operating through the mode of public violence, that was intended to compel the guilty to repent and alter his/her ways through the threat of violence and force.

Hence we see how in medieval Europe, Asia and the Arab world the modes of public punishment were all equally gory and bloody: Heads were chopped off, bodies were impaled, whipped, burned, branded, broken, quartered and sliced to pieces. Most of these punishments were carried out in public, ostensibly as a 'lesson' to others. But as many modern psychologists have pointed out, these public spectacles of violence also served the voyeuristic inclination of those who relished the sight of bodies being violated in public, and were thus also forms of bizarre public pornography.

In his study on the evolution of torture and punishment in Iran, Rejali notes how this medieval mode of punishment gradually developed to become a more sophisticated mode of care and policing instead. The violent spectacles of state-sanctioned violence that involved public enactments of torture eventually gave way to the regime of the prison and the culture of pastoral care and reform of the Self instead. Why?

Simply put, the reason behind this evolution lay in the growing consciousness that the medieval modes of punishment of the past were simply barbaric, primitive, and missed the point. Particularly after the advent of the Iranian revolution, Iranian lawmakers realized that the aim of law enforcement was not simply to exercise legitimate state violence upon citizens, but to help citizens reach their full potential as rational agents and responsible individuals. Medieval modes of violent punishment could not do that for the simple reason that by abusing and violating the bodies of the condemned, they were targeting the body, and not the conscious Self.

The argument can be illustrated thus: Pre-modern modes of punishment assumed that if an individual had committed a crime or a wrong against society, then the offending organ or part of the body of the individual would pay the price. Hence in many primitive societies we come across instances of bodily abuse and torture that target the organs or parts of the body that were to 'blame': The person who lies or slanders, for instance, would have his tongue cut out. The voyeur would have his eyes gouged out. The thief would have his hand cut off. The rapist would be castrated, and so on.

Such modes of physical punishment were, however, deemed to be less and less effective and furthermore failed to solve the problem of criminality itself, for the punishment was not being inflicted on the truly offending party, namely the subjective Self. For it is not the tongue that lies, but the person. It is not the hand that steals, but the person. It is not the penis that rapes, but the person. Addressing the responsibility of the person entailed going beyond the body, and dealing with the psychology of the individual itself. This in turn meant that violence was not a solution to the problem, but in fact only made things worse: For a state that endorses violence as a means to achieve justice eventually arrives at a different destination altogether. Such a state merely normalizes violence and makes violence more and more commonplace and acceptable. Rather than morally uplifting society, it debases and brutalizes society even further. An example would be the case of the French Revolution, where the revolutionaries who executed the leaders of the old regime eventually ended up being murdered themselves too, including Robespierre, who died at the guillotine that he himself introduced.

The development of the related notions of justice, care, reform (of the Self) and responsibility (of both the State and the Individual subject) only came about much later, with the development of modern social sciences that included political sociology, psychology and notably the psychology of criminality. The modern age marks its difference from the medieval age by accepting that bodies are not to be blamed, but rather subjectivities and selves. In other words, modern human beings relinquished their obsession with violent torture and punishment when they realized that torturing and abusing people would not make them better human beings.

Which brings us to the current debate about caning in Malaysia, be it caning that is enforced by civil secular law or by Islamic law. Already in Malaysia we have the instance of a woman who may soon be caned for the Shariah offence of drinking beer. And meanwhile in Malaysia we have illegal immigrants being caned for over-staying their visas and entry permits in the country.

Human rights activists who oppose caning and other forms of state-sanctioned physical violence do so on the grounds that we believe that such violent punishments do nothing to solve the attendant problems and issues that need to be addressed in another, more intelligent way. Caning an illegal immigrant does nothing to reform the person, but merely violates and abuses his/her body. Likewise caning someone for what is perceived to be a moral crime by religious law does nothing to reform the person’s subjectivity, but merely abuses the body of the person instead. Why, even in the Islamic Republic of Iran the regime of the Ayatollahs realized that physical torture was never and could never succeed in making someone a better human being, but would actually lead to the opposite and create a society that was more and more violent and accustomed to violence. Hence their use of public education and counselling instead.

Malaysians are now faced with a similar question and we need to ask ourselves whether the time has come for this society of ours to understand and accept the fact that violence is not and will never be a solution to the social problems of our times - be it criminality, corruption, abuse of power or the breakdown of the social contract. The modern human subject realizes that one cannot be forced to be just or good, and that a good society cannot emerge out of violent compulsion. State violence merely brutalizes us further and denies the value and primacy of human reason and the capacity for human beings to think rationally and to alter themselves rationally too. Whipping someone into submission cannot ever do that; for violence and reason are never complementary.

Would you like a Norwegian fishwhipping? Great for your morals!

[First posted 28 August 2009, reposted 15 November 2014]

COMPUTERIZED HYPERPORN

If you find this attractive, you might be an AI.

Google recently unleashed its image identification artificial neural network to the internet masses, and, predictably, the internet has quickly decided to turn it into psychedelic porn for robots. Google's DeepDream program takes images fed into the company's image recognition system and turns them into the most extreme version of that image imaginable. The network snags tiny portions of an image and runs it through its recognition system, exaggerating small features within it. As we explained last month:

"This basically generated a feedback loop, which exaggerated or read more meaning into simple features. For example, the researchers explained that: 'If a cloud looks a little bit like a bird, the network will make it look more like a bird. This in turn will make the network recognize the bird even more strongly on the next pass and so forth, until a highly detailed bird appears, seemingly out of nowhere.'"

UNCLE ANT’S AGONY & ECSTASY COLUMN #1 (repost)

In early 2004 when the arts portal kakiseni.com had the infamous Pang Khee Teik as editor, we experimented briefly with an "artistic agony aunt" column that only ran for a few months before it fizzled out for lack of interest. Rummaging through my files, I found these obscure documents I felt were worth re-issuing for posterity.

The very first person to send a question to Uncle Ant's Agony & Ecstasy column happened to be the ever-popular actor/author/raconteur & restaurateur Patrick Teoh....

So much has been said about Malaysian English language theatre. Elitist... Incestuous... Self serving... Must not be entertaining or it will not be theatre... etc., etc. So my question is this: Which should fuel whom ah?


Stratford fuels West End? Broadway fuels 'serious' theatre? These theatre baargers talk too much and do too little. Sometimes I wish that they would just shut up and do their thing, whatever that may be, and let the paying public decide if they want more or not. Let's stop or at least pull back a little on this "hey we want to make you think, make a difference in your life and your community, etc, blablablahhhhhhhhhhhh"...

I buy a ticket, and they are getting really expensive these days, so make it fun for me first lah. Then if I get something out of it that will make a diff in my life OK that's a nice bonus. If not so what lah? Nowadays, first first already WAH must think about this and that, much fight with authorities, issues, issues issues... Wah theatre damn difficult to enjoy lah... let's buy ticket go to Tanjung Golden Village cinema lah.

I hope I am making some sense to you, my old friend. if not just delete this email and relegate me to that bunch of wankers above and I shall not bother you again lah :-)

Pax,
Patrick Teoh

AGONY ANT says...

Congratulations, Patrick, for being the very first to pose an "arty" question to Uncle Ant's all-new Agony Column on kakiseni.com! Can't think of a better way to kick this off than with the funny-serious question you raise - which actually opens up a complex of issues to which no straightforward answer could possibly apply. 


First of all, it prompts us to return to the foundation of all artistic endeavor and see if we can learn anything by excavating there. But let's keep our search focused on theater so this doesn't degenerate into a wordy tome. 


Theater has long been represented by a pair of masks - comic and tragic - showing the two sides of human experience, the light and the heavy. The mask as a symbol of personality goes back to prehistoric times when tribal shamans would trance out by donning a mask and robes while channeling an animal totem or the spirit of a powerful ancestor. This magical ritual was usually to bless a hunting expedition with success, or rescue a soul from the astral realms and return it safely to its physical vehicle, thereby curing any illness afllicting it. In Athens, theater served as social catharsis as well as moral education - with masked players personifying various attributes and tendencies like nobility, loyalty, courage, jealousy, greed, cruelty and deceit.

In general, tragedies were favored by the ruling elite who found solace in watching their own tragic flaws depicted on stage and were thus able to assuage their guilt a little and discharge a few sentimental tears (even tyrants enjoy a good cry, as exemplified by Hitler's S.S. officers who reportedly shed copious sentimental tears while listening to Wagnerian opera - after sending trainloads of unfortunates to the death camps).

Comedies were often a form of stress relief for the masses who could enjoy a public snicker or two at the foibles of the upper classes without having to risk their skins by openly rebelling against the power structure. Satire was, in effect, an important safety valve promoting social stability without actually threatening the status quo. 


Nevertheless, theater certainly contributed to radical shifts in the mass consciousness by triggering perceptual change from within, on the ethical and aesthetical levels. Those who desire to maintain tight control of public opinion are understandably wary of the potentially subversive power of artistic expression. Indeed, almost all major shifts in the mass psyche can be said to have been precipitated by specific literary and theatrical works. 

Scene from Tristan & Isolde

How about the visual arts? Well, they do inevitably exert their aesthetic influence, but they have traditionally been addressed more to the privileged classes than to the masses (cartoons and photography are interesting exceptions that warrant a whole separate study, which we won't delve into here).
 
So where does "entertainment" feature in all this? A play doesn't necessarily have to be funny to be entertaining. Any story told with great skill is entertaining in that it effectively engages the audience's attention. Millions enjoy following soap series on the boob tube in a multitude of languages and dialects. Tragic romances like Tristan und Isolde - the inspiration for Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story - have enchanted audiences for generations. In effect, it doesn't matter whether the subject matter is light or heavy - what's important is that the tale be masterfully told. 

There's nothing more deadly than a good joke badly told. A heart-wrenching tragedy, artistically rendered, can be life-affirming and uplifting. In short, giving theatre audiences their money's worth has little to do with actual content - but everything to do with the degree of skill, the intensity of commitment, the level of passion the performers manage to inject into the overall effort.

While those in theater are often accused of being there to gratify their enormous egos, the same can be said about every other human endeavor - including warmongering and empire-building. Perhaps it's our deeply-ingrained need to seize some species of immortality, spawned from an awareness of our pathetic mortality and vulnerability in the face of life's vicissitudes.

Returning to Patrick's question about whether our theater scene is "elitist, incestuous, self-serving, etc"... of course it is, old chum! Elitism vs Populism is an age-old issue. Elitism assumes that the hoi polloi is a dumb ass that needs to be thrown a stack of hay once in while (or at least a loaf of bread and a few circuses). 

Bread and circuses: another bad review

Populism believes the public is a dumb ass only because elites have rigged the game to keep it forever so. Each of us conducts within our own psyches a neverending argument between the Elitist and the Populist. The Elitist in us knows we are far superior to Most People. The Populist feels it's our sacred duty to disseminate our gifts and insights as far and wide as possible, in the hope that Most People will ultimately benefit - and, even if they don't, at least they'll be forking out hard-earned money to keep us in the business of having fun. 


The true Populist is shamelessly vulgar and watches only wrestling videos, 'Survivor' and late-night product promos - dismissing everything else as "one big self-indulgent wank." The true Populist came into his or her own during Mao's Cultural Revolution, when intellectuals and artists had a real rough time. I don't believe I've ever met a true Populist and I pray I never will!

Incest is how it all began and incest is how it all ends. Remember when there were only a handful of families on the planet - and they were all related? Brother-sister marriage was common practice amongst the ancient royals. Why, they learnt it from the gods among whom incest was not only prevalent, it was perfectly normal. 


Since theater people the world over are a great big fraternity (and sorority) - and since all of us are evolving into soul-brothers and sisters (or water-siblings if you prefer Robert A. Heinlein's terminology as presented in his seminal work of speculative anthropology, Stranger in a Strange Land)... how can any of us have any fun if we don't practise incest? Just answer me that, Bro.

Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the
Dominican Republic in the 1930s

If you argue that incest breeds stupidity... hey, do you think a smart species would go about destroying its own ecosystem and expending most of its energy on perpetual warfare? Maybe it's high time we invited a new crop of ETs to come and revitalize our Gene Pool?

Self-serving? Hey, show me someone who claims to be serving the "common good" or "public interest" - and I'll show you a politician or a creepy civil servant who just wants to get on the censorship board so he gets to see all the naughty bits everybody else can't. Never trust anyone who isn't serving his or her own interests, Patrick. They all grow up and become dictators and dickheads. 

Which brings us to the possibility of ENLIGHTENED self-interest, wherein we finally realize that our lives are all interconnected and interwoven in time and space - and that by guiltlessly fulfilling our own ego needs, we are actually playing a unique role in evolution. There's nothing more inspiring than a self-fulfilled individual, free to do his or her own thing, and in the process turning others on and firing synapses they never even knew existed.

As for your remark that theater tickets are “getting really expensive” – it’s all part of the yuppism that began in the mid-1980s. Remember when a cup of kopi-O cost only 50 cents (that was before the day of the sen)? Now you pay at least RM5 at the Coffee Bean (and it’s not even the tasty local stuff but some fancy imported variety that makes you think you’re in Europe). I couldn’t afford to see a single play if I didn’t get comps as a reviewer – yet I still see full houses at some productions, even the ones with RM100 tickets or more! Obviously there’s a new middle class that can afford a night or two out every week. They constitute the main support of English language theater in KL and Penang.

Theater is generally priced for the comfortable middle class no matter where you live. But now that we have affordable digital technology, there’s no reason why every major production can’t be professionally shot on high-grade digital video and packaged as DVDs and VCDs which can be sold at pirate prices or uploaded on YouTube, so those who can’t afford the luxury of a live performance can at least enjoy good theater at home. Indeed, it’s about time we introduced a cultural channel on TV that features televised plays, interviews with interesting personalities, intelligent discussions on current issues, documentaries on inspiring writers, actors, dancers, sculptors, composers, and so on.

To sum it all up, I'd say that despite the odds theater is alive and well in Malaysia and has actually come quite a long way. There is only one stumbling block as far as I can see: it's the "katak di bawah tempurung" (tempurungism, I call it) patriarchal-provincial mindset - the same that produced the Inquisition and the Taliban - still prevalent amongst our bureaucrats. The sort of bungling interference that has put City Hall in the limelight recently can be viewed as a sign that our theater scene is gaining influence, maturity and power - and therefore poses a threat to the status quo which must be nipped in the bud (not pinched in the butt). This presents us all with an opportunity to seriously question why City Hall has been charged with issuing entertainment licences - why do I need a licence to be entertaining? It's absolute crap.

Anyone know a professional abolitionist who can help abolish all primitive, irrelevant and suppressive laws? Methinks only an abolitionist can deal with those perverted abortionists of art that lurk in the corridors of officialdom.

Agony Ant
25 Feb 2004

UNCLE ANT'S AGONY & ECSTASY COLUMN #2

[First posted 16 January 2012, reposted 10 December 2015]

MOTH BALLS ONLINE: New Blog In Progress!

From MOTH BALLS ~ Scatological & Eschatological Poems by Kit Leee 

(now Antares)

Chief Rosy Lips, no use flogging a dead horse, catch a bus! (repost)

Native Americans (often referred to derogatorily as "Indians") never owned land. They saw themselves as caretakers and had the wisdom to respect others’ right to walk upon the land. If only the White Man had befriended them and left them in peace, he would have learned a lot from them and been better off for it.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that: when you discover you are riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.

However, in our government, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger (and more expensive) whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

4. Arranging trips to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase efficiency.

9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.

10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some live horses.

12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And of course....

13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

If you don't understand the stupidity in this reasoning, you probably are happy with the way our tax money is being spent... and that would totally make you part of the problem!

[First posted 1 January 2012, reposted 24 February 2014 & 5 November 2015]



[Dead Horse story courtesy of Olivia de Haulleville]