Why Is It Always About Race

The king and I attended a showing of a Singapore movie at the Seattle Film Festival (SIFF) on Friday evening. It would be my first time at a SIFF event as well as my first at a Malay movie. The movie contained English, Mandarin, Tamil and Malay but it was predominantly Malay spoken, quite concentrated around the Muslim religion, death and the rather non-communication throughout Singaporean families and a selfish nation as a whole.

'Salawati' - also the name of the twelve year old actress in the movie - wasn't exactly my type of film. I knew this before I went to see it. But seeing that it was a movie made in Singapore about Singaporeans (even though not made by a true blue Singaporean at least the American now lives in Singapore), I couldn't miss it.

The main storyline was pretty simple. Malay girl witnesses the death of her brother who drowns at sea after not being helped by a passer-by. It is not clear if the boy would have lived even if the passer-by had helped since the second man (an Indian) who helped came right after the first one (a Chinese man) who ignored the pleas of Salawati.

There was a question-and-answer session after the almost 90 min movie (yes it was rather s-l-o-w for my liking) as the director, Micheal X Grigaroff had flown in from Singapore for the filming of his show. Only half of the already very sparse audience stayed for this session and it made me chuckle that the small audience of mostly Caucasians were so inquisitive and impressed with the actors - especially the girl who played Salawati (a first time actor, apparently), the theme behind it (which was an odd question to me) and the inspiration that brought upon the making of the movie. One such question that struck me as odd and bothersome was one of the last couple of questions of whether the first person (the Chinese man) who refused to help the the little girl knew this girl was Malay; ie, was he able to tell the difference in race? ...and if that was the reason why he didn't help the girl. WOW! That boggled my mind! Sure it's not exactly anything to be proud of that I know Singaporeans (I, myself, included) are generally pretty selfish people. A lot of us are taught as kids to mind our own business. "Aiyah, dun care lah - just myob (mind your own business)!" or "why do you have to be so kaypo/kpo (busybody in our lingo)" or "cover your own ass first before you want to go kpo'ing around other people's business ok!?". So when the American asked the question about whether the Chinese man would have helped the little Malay girl if she had been Chinese struck a chord in me. Funny, it was practically insulting to say this fictitious character was not just selfish but a racist! Not to say Singaporeans are not racist, but we're not actually taught nor built to think about race before anything. An afterthought... maybe... but I can safely say if the little girl was Chinese, and a selfish (and racist) Chinese guy had walked by, he wouldn't have helped her either. Sad, but true...

Salawati

Country: Singapore
Year: 2008
Running time: 82 Minutes
Genre: Drama
Premiere:World Premiere
Program: Contemporary World Cinema
Language: Chinese, Tamil, English and Malay
Sub-Titles:English Sub-Titles

Twelve-year-old Singaporean-Malay girl Salawati recently witnessed the death of her older brother. In the aftermath of his death, a group of loutish Indian couriers and a troubled Chinese family become possible suspects in the crime as the boy’s death raises questions of faith and forgiveness in this touching drama.