Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia

2. Malay Cultural Landscape and Identity: Malaysia and Indonesia

2 Malay Cultural Landscape and Identity: Malaysia and Indonesia This chapter explores the cultural landscape of Malaysia and Indonesia, including the media landscape which has influenced cultural identities in the region. Both countries can be categorized as classic examples of postcolonial societies trying to build a common cultural identity. Malaysia Creating a Developed Nation Malaysia is a country that has embarked upon an ambitious path to create a modern developed nation by 2020. The way the Malay identity is defined in this context is an important element in the development of this vision. Since this study is looking predominantly at the question of cultural identities of Malay youth, the main focus will be upon the Malay community. Vision 2020 — known asWawasan 2020 — was launched in February 1991 at the height of Malaysia’s economic boom by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in a speech titled “Malaysia: The Way Forward”. This vision, which expects Malay Cultural Landscape and Identity 45 Malaysia to achieve the status of a fully-developed country by 2020 by accelerating industrialization and modernization, includes an explicit commitment to the forging of a Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian Nation) that would transcend ethnic identities and loyalties. Malaysian scholar M.K. Anuar (2000) claims that inherent in this “Mahathirist vision” “is the acceptance of the so-called modernising values replacing the ‘traditional’ ones that are regarded as stubborn hindrance to progress and prosperity”. He argues that in this modernizing mission there will occasionally be tension between the traditional and modern values arising mainly as a result of images and texts flowing into Malaysia rather freely from the outside world. In his book titled The Malay Dilemma, Mahathir Mohamad (1970) argues that a vast majority of the Malays are too feudalist and wish to remain so. But the author claims that that mindset needs to be changed by a revolution. Two decades before launching Wawasan 2020, and even a decade before he became Prime Minister, Mahathir stated, Essentially because of environmental and hereditary factors, the Malays have become a rural race with only a minute portion of them in the towns. Rural people everywhere are less sophisticated and progressive than urban people. Our solution to this problem must be to attempt a reversal of this state of affairs. In other words, we must seek to urbanise the Malays. (1970, p. 105) However, Mahathir did not call for the destruction of the Malay ruling system and the overthrow of the sultans.1 46 Countering MTV Influence in Indonesia and Malaysia Rather, he warned, “It is the rulers who … in the past furnished and continued to present the Malay character of Malaya. Remove them, and the last vestiges of traditional Malaya would disappear” (Mohamad 1970, p. 104). He insisted that while urbanizing the Malays, the monarchs (sultans) and their religion Islam should not disappear. “Religion is another established force with the Malays. No change, no plans and no ideology, which runs counter to the religion of the Malays, can succeed. Islam must therefore be left alone in the quest for Malay progress” (1970, p. 104). Mahathir, who became Prime Minister in 1981, led Malaysia in a modernizing mission for over twenty years before he stepped down in October 2003. During his time Malaysia became a rapidly urbanizing society and one of the tiger economies2 of Asia. Modernization and Developing a Post-Independence Malay Identity Goh (2002, p. 184) argues that the modern experience is often equated with the “history or trajectory of capitalist modernity and technical rationality in the West, along with a culturally and socially accomplished form of life that goes with industrial society”. This Euro-American narrative of modernity as the norm leads to the “mis-recognition” of the new meaning of “modern” in the non-Western world. Goh claims that Malaysia offers a model which challenges these notions of modernity. The process of changing the notion of the nation to fit into Malaysia’s own version of modernity — the Wawasan 2020 concept — includes redefining both “Malayness” and class as the central sites for rethinking the very notion Malay Cultural Landscape and Identity 47 of modernity and ideas of the modern. These contests are played out in the cities, where various cultural visions of modernity are actively reconstituting urban space. During the European colonial era, from the seventeenth century onwards, the notion of Malayness shifted depending on competing ideals over Islam, Malay royal authority, and Malay ethnicity. When Malaysia became...