Malaysian film featuring gay character

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A report in today's Guardian about a gay character in a Malaysian film who has a sex-change to please his/her boyfriend and then regrets it before falling in love with a girl.

See for yourselves: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/18/malaysia-first-f...

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Malaysian film featuring gay character

Me, I am wondering about how the film will be received in America and the U.K.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

On the other hand, one might look at it as subversive...

Puddintane's picture

...or at least as subversive as it could be and stay within the rules, since the gay protagonist turns out to be as gay as gay can be, despite surgery and quixotic sex-change. Dang, they can't "cure" homosexuality, even with knives and strong chemicals, which promises endless regression. If they "reverse" the sex change, it's obviously like Alice and that damned bottle labelled "Drink Me," bouncing back and forth between "too big" and "too small."

Hello, sailor...

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

I thought it ironic

Angharad's picture

that the protagonist goes from gay man to lesbian. Interesting turn of events.

Angharad

Angharad

Lesbian

I sort of suspect, without having seen this, but having lived for a number of years in the country in question, that it might be more of a case of 'all a gay man needs is the right woman'

A different take on the dreams of some inadequate men that all a lesbian needs is a good seeing to (by them, of course) to get them straightened out. Add the views of certan ultrafeminists that there is no such thing as a transwoman, merely a surgically mutilated man, and it all smells.

Pardon my cynicism, it's not been a good day.

Depends on how you look at it...

Puddintane's picture

...and since the idiots in charge of these people's lives choose to look at them through the microscope of hatred and bigotry, thus trying to enforce their particular viewpoint on everyone, I'm fairly confident (despite labouring under the handicap of not having seen the art itself) that the artists have found a way to twist the rules to imply an entirely different covert meaning than the rules seek to ensure.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.
--- Andy Goldsworthy, Artist

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/subversive.html#i...

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

George Orwell

Puddintane's picture

The book, 1984, is not a tragic story. It's inarguable that the ending is *exactly* what Big Brother desires; the hero is revealed as an antihero and Big Brother is superficially triumphant, but that's not what the mind brings away from the story, which is that the State run by Big Brother is evil incarnate.

If the authorities want us to believe that our minds can be coerced into thinking what they want us to think, the only action possible for a free human being is to disagree. We can choose, as Humpty Dumpty does, to believe whatever we want to believe, and by insisting that, when Big Brother "wins," he actually loses, which is a peculiar type of victory.


Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
--- Bertrand Russell

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style