The snipping of Sepet

Yasmin Ahmad’s film, Sepet, must be such a good film that we Malaysians may be the last ones to know much about it although she is a local movie maker. The uncensored original has already been screened in Singapore, where it was very well received by Singaporean audiences. It is now on its way to the International Film Festival of Women Directors in France this March; then on to the Barcelona Film Festival in Spain, come April. Foreign world audiences, movie enthusiasts and critics will know far more about Sepet than we the home crowd will. In fact, they will know the REAL story in its entirety whilst we have to content ourselves with the incomplete censored version.

Absurd, but not surprising. Many other films, home produced as well as foreign-made, have gone under the knife of the Lembaga Penapis Filem Malaysia, our Censorship Board. The ‘surgery’ performed by these ‘censor surgeons’ appears meaningless, as in the case of Sepet, where nine cuts were made.

Cutting your nose only spites your face

Thanks to Bissme S. who interviewed Yasmin for theSun, four examples of the sort of scenes censored by the Board have been illustrated for public information and judgment. All of them when put in context - and some on their own - are totally innocuous. To cite an example, “The Chinese boy and his Malay girlfriend go to a photo shop and take a picture of themselves sitting on a motorcycle.” ‘What’s wrong with that?’ is the first question that comes to mind. That this scene was censored is laughable. If the ‘censor surgeons’ objection was that this was an inter-racial scene, the movie would have to be banned as the whole theme of the movie centers on the romance between a Chinese boy and a Malay girl. Is this how the Board promotes racial harmony and the spirit of ‘muhibbah’ in our multi-racial society?

The other scene, I would like to say something about is one where a husband tickles his wife affectionately in bed. I can’t help completely agreeing with Yasmin when she commented, “I don’t understand why this scene has to be cut. We are allowed to show husbands slapping their wives on terrestrial TV. But we can’t show husbands being affectionate to their wives.”

Very true; terrestrial TV highlights violence especially against women. Every time Asian or other films are advertised in the trailers shown during advertisement breaks, the most sensationalized scenes are of husbands battering their wives, people in fist fights even involving women, people shooting other people, murder, murder-rape victims, bomb explosions in public places, vehicle destruction and every variation of violence. These the Censorship Board approves for viewing by all and sundry including children.

Some films the Board classifies as ‘U’ include scenes or deal with themes which are for adult audiences. Does the Board care about how these affect younger audiences in our society who are not yet equipped psychologically to deal with such issues?
This is prime time television, to say nothing of the unhealthy scheduling of children’s programmes at midnight until the early hours of the morning during school holidays.

Guardians of Public Morals?

The irony of the situation is that although the priorities of the Censorship Board seem somewhat inverted, it seems to want to sport a paternalistic attitude towards the public, wearing the ill-fitting guise of ‘Guardians of Public Morality’.

What these ‘guardians of public morality’ fail to realize is that films like Sepet that are aimed at reflecting our rich Malaysian multicultural heritage and forging racial integration are impoverished by their apparent random, meaningless censorship.

When asked whether the scenes censored were necessary to the film, Yasmin’s reply was pure commonsense, “If the scenes were not necessary. I would not have shot them.” No artist would include anything meaningless in their masterpiece. It would be a sinful waste of precious time and resources.

Sepet should not have been censored. As Sepet has at last arrived home and is being screened in cinemas all over the country, please go and see it and judge for yourselves if the chopped-up version is still comprehensible. Personally, I’d wait to see an uncensored version of it to fully enjoy the rich cultural flavour of Malaysia that it portrays.

So, members of the Lembaga Penapis Filem Malaysia, think carefully before cutting your nose to spite your face!