Commercials ; INTERVIEW WITH YASMIN AHMAD: 'Harmony, not homogeneity'

Hello again from me, Remi. Marketing is very important. Even if our product doesn't do much, but with good marketing, we have the best product ever sold. One of the marketing methods is commercials. In this article, I found that commercials is not just to market productor services, but also it can effect the way of our living in the comunity. This is an interview with Yasmin Ahmad, got it from www.nst.com.my.

SEPET director Yasmin Ahmad is best known for creating poignant portraits such as the Petronas festival commercials. But her latest work, the 'LRT commercial', touched a raw nerve. Two MPs made a fuss about it in Parliament, offended that a Malay had been cast as the rude and boorish villain who would not give up his seat to those who needed it more. The exuberant and unrepentant filmmaker tells LEE SIEW LIAN why she did it.



Q: How is Sepet doing?
A: It's still on in Megamall. It has been on for a month now, and full house even on weekdays. It has made RM600,000 so far, about half of what Gerak Khas made. Given that Sepet was shown in nine cinemas, it is doing much better than Gerak Khas, which was shown in 39 cinemas.

Q: How did the LRT commercial for the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage's Courtesy Campaign come about?
A: It started with the ministry ordering Finas (the national film development corporation) to find the person responsible for the Petronas commercials. People at Finas who never returned my calls suddenly were desperate to see me, which was very delicious for me. In the meantime, the director-general, Datuk Azizah Abud, tried to call me. She used to be in the military so she's very impatient with government people; she told Finas to call me in the morning, and by afternoon, she was trying to get me on the phone herself. She's brilliant.

When she met me, I already had an idea. It's a script that I wrote long ago and no one had any use for, and I really liked it. Whenever I get an idea like the LRT script, I think: "I'm not smart enough to have thought of this myself. It must have come from God."

Then when I tried to sell it to Petronas, it said, "No, no, no, we can't do this". I was really very sad. How could God give me something so beautiful and then not get anyone to take it? There must be use for it. I didn't get this idea for nothing. Sure enough when the ministry called, I said I have just the script!

You know, if I had made it any earlier, I wouldn't have been the director I am now, I wouldn't have been able to execute it so well. All good things come to those who wait, and all that. Azizah said she liked it, but it's a bit quiet. "No dialogue-ke?" No, I said.

Cakap sikit pun tak de? No, tak de."But we have a jingle already written to be sung by Siti Nurhaliza (I think). I want you to use the jingle." I said I don't want.She said: "You dare say no to me?" I said yes. She said: "I'll pay you." and I said: "You keep your money." She looked at me and said: "I like her."

THE PRESENTATION

Q: So it worked out well in terms of the commercial?
A: I was supposed to make a presentation to the minister, but the D-G gatal and told him the story. The minister (Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim) said it was too quiet. She said: "You see? Write something-la."And I told her: "I think it's going to be very loud". I refused to write another script, and told her to go to Filem Negara. Cheaper some more.She got angry, but then she did it anyway. She said she was going to give me the benefit of the doubt

Q: Have many people associated you with the commercial yet?
A: Haven't they? I suppose it's because I only do sentimental things.

Q: Was race something that was in your mind when you cast it?
A: Yes. When I was a little girl, we'd move from community to community. Sometimes ordinary, sometimes mixed. One of my mum's best friends was Chinese, Mrs Tan, and another an Indian.
When we were in a Malay community, there would be talk, what the Indians and Chinese are like. So would the Indian and Chinese have their truisms about what the Malays were like.

It's the same (everywhere), rooted in fear and ignorance, fear of the unknown.

In making this commercial, I wanted a story about a young man who won't help a pregnant woman.I figured it had to come down to race. You have to choose talent and they will ask you if you want the old woman to be like this or like that, what age, and all those details.
Coupled with that is that I'm a Melayu who's writing and directing, so it's bad form to portray somebody from another race.
If a Melayu puts on a Melayu, then it's not so bad because they are my own people. And there are rude people from all races and polite people, too.Then I thought: "Oh, I know, I'll make the blind man a Melayu." So there is good and bad in every race.

Q: Many people have missed the blind man, focusing on the rude young Malay.
A: Ya. They see a blind man but don't see his race. But it was deliberate. I knew I had to balance it out so I made the blind man Melayu.

Q: You said you were happy there was controversy. Why?
A: You know what Orson Welles said? "If there's anything worse than being talked about, it is not being talked about."Someone told me the commercial has made a difference, that the LRT is better now. This girl told me, after the MPs brought the issue up: "Dia orang tak naik LRT!"

Q: And now, you've started this huge thing where everyone has to put (people's background and race) into context.
A: You know this Satu Bangsa Malaysia thing? I'm really not interested in seeing us as a homogenous society, as if we are all the same. Don't want all this (stuff) about integration.

I don't want integration. I want Indians and Chinese to stay as they are. I love them as they are. I don't want them to be like me, and I don't want to be like them.

Q: So if it's not integration, then what should we seek?
A: Harmony, not homogeneity.

Q: What about tolerance, then?
A: It's terrible. Tolerance is "I don't like you but I will bear with you." But if tolerance is all I can get, then, okay-lah, I'll settle for it. You can't force people to like people.

Q: What exactly are you hoping to achieve, to get people talking about rudeness or sensitivity?
A: It is about rudeness. It's like a beautiful painting but there will always be one or two (people) who will say this is not right, or that is wrong, to make it a little bit less like a beautiful painting.
When people see the actor (Adlin Aman Ramli) they maki him. He said people cursed him on the street. His sister was snubbed by her work mates, who said her brother kurang ajar, badly brought up. They over-reacted, but he said he didn't mind.

What the commercial touched in people, by and large, is the rudeness. The two MPs basically brought up (a different issue), which is race. But to take race as the biggest issue is an injustice to Malaysia.

Like Orked said in Sepet: "Who cares why somebody likes somebody because of their race? It's when they hate them, that is the problem."

Q: The whole reason you were so successful with the Petronas commercials is that you can see all these things that make us who we are, about being Malay, Chinese and Indian.
A: There are only two things that interest me - people and love. I don't care about anything else. Someone once said to me "Your films and commercials, everything is sayang. Not boring-ke?"

I'm a Muslim, and we are encouraged to see love in everything. It's when we put on our shoes, when we wash our hands, before we eat. "In the name of God, the compassionate and merciful".

Q: What is next?

A: Actually, (the commercial) is about love. I just showed the other side about being compassionate.

p/s; Can also go to her blog , http://yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com/

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