I will judge you.

I find that line very.. poignant. Double-edged. I will judge you. It’s from Crash’s DVD main menu, with other related phrases beside it. I will kill you. I will love you.

I recently watched it two nights ago; Crash is a movie released last year (understandably banned in Malaysia), largely about racism going about in the USA. Blacks, whites, Asians, Middle-east Asians.. how one is stupidly afraid of the blacks, how some blacks live up to their stereotypes.

This movie does not go about screaming “omfgracist” at you. It moves around in a linear, solid pace - not rapid, that even the climax does not explode on you like a mortar. It’s a beautifully-crafted show that depicts the lives of a group of people that affect one another in turn, how your actions no matter how insignificant will come back to haunt you.

A quote from their opening:

It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something. – Graham

And so, the underlining humility and humanity of Crash.

I will judge you.

And as such, I find it saddening and most disgusting that there are some people in this country that still subscribe to dinosaur dogmas. For instance, when I watched the last half hour of this Fenomena Seni forum on RTM1 (the horror), they were hotly debating the topic, “Adakah Sepet dan Gubra pencemar budaya?”

It got my blood boiling because out of the three panels, only one remained calm and actually reasoned out well about the movies. For instance, the other two bastards and one bitch considered the film(s) to be un-Islamic/pencemar budaya with the following views:

- Orked in Sepet went in to a shop selling pork and said in Cantonese, “Eh, wangilah!”

- In Gubra, the opening scene showed the bilal carressing a dog.

- In Sepet, the husband was in his underwear walking past the maid. wtf like that also considered an issue?

among others that I managed to catch what they were talking. One of the men is the assistant editor of Berita Harian or something. And seriously, if this forum had not highlighted all these minor scenes, I wouldn’t have thought them as controversial at all.

Like a local blogger said, conservative Muslims watching pig innards must’ve cried in horror (a person sitting next to him in the cinema actually covered her eyes) because it’s the first new genre of Malay horror that Yasmin had managed to create: the pork horror.

==*cue scene of pigs flying*==

Conservatives *runs out from cinema, hands flying*: AHHHHH TIDAKKKKKKK BABI BERTERBANGAN!!!

Raja Azmi, the bitch with a block for brains, at one point said (warning: quote of the millennium), “Isteri solehah takkan benarkan suaminya memasak.” OMGWTF HUSBANDS CAN’T COOK NOW? Shawn can quit his Culinary Arts class now. Chef Wan should be fired.

The same bitch talked about how there isn’t a need to make a movie on interracial love, interracial acceptance etc, because apparently sudah tahu bahawa Tanah Melayu ini Melayu yang punya, dan bangsa Melayu dengan penuh budi bahasa dan budiman telah membenarkan bangsa lain bertempat di sini dengan penuh toleransi. I got pissed at her words, because dammit, firstly it’s Malaysia and no longer Tanah Melayu (which again proves how backwards her thinking is), and Malaysia belongs to all of us, regardless of race.

RACIST.

About the bilal who has prostitutes for neighbours, one of the men suggested she should have went to the JAKIM (Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia) or some other Islam jabatans to report the matter. Wow, is this a documentary of conservatives or what? Is it his movie for that matter?

And on how the movie Sepet finally brings more non-Muslims to watch Malay shows, Pn Raja Azmi with several failed movies under her belt, said something like, “Dahla ada bahasa orang asing, subtitle pun bahasa asing. Mestilah diorang tengok.” Gubra does not have any subtitles of any sort. Bitch.

I believe all directors should have creative freedom, and not be restricted simply because Yasmin Ahmad is a Muslim, and hence has to create something to please conservatives and remain trapped in this invisible coconut shell. Because of people like Raja Azmi and other old fools with the mindset that properly belongs to the Dark Ages, our dear Malaysia remains behind of other countries.

Remind me to stay away from that bigoted forum for the rest of my life. It’s a sad reminder of how unprogressive Malaysia could be with these “powerful” people of the meda living in it.

And, in the end, despite saying stuffs like how we still live in harmony even with so many different races, we’re still bound by racism thoughts. You are lying if you never ever have such thoughts.

But then again, it won’t hurt to just live together under one sky. It probably would be hard, or near impossible to reach 100% interracial tolerance and acceptance, simply because.

I will judge you.