Hang Jebat 4/13

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted one of these. This one, as noted before, is the section that chaps my hide. Now you can see why.



Now, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what Dang Baru is. I looked up 'dang' in the Kamus Dewan, and it says that it's a title for a woman of high status in the palace. That's all well and good for the Dangs and Dayangs that Jebat consorts with later in the text, but Dang Baru sure looks like a servant of the bendahara here. The confusion continues.

Also, though I've seen this scene ten thousand times, I only now noticed that the bendahara's staircase is the stereotypical Melaka style. (Without tiles, but in the right shape and density.)

He has a mission for her: give some sort of gift thingy to Hang Tuah and Co. "But... pay attention!" (Tapi... ingat!) I don't get it. Is he insinuating that Kerma Wijaya will be upset if he sees her or what? Or that she's an airhead? Or? Help?

So it goes, and as it goes, she went. That log bridge reminds me a sort of scary interlude on the outskirts of the Cardamom Mountains in southwestern Cambodia. My driver decided that I needed to see the river from a flattish boulder in the middle. He arranged a sort of bridge that wasn't so much a bridge as a guide rope that wasn't so much a rope as a branch. It was terrifying. The current was /really/ strong and bone-breaking rocks plentiful. So I kind of sympathize with our heroine right here. (For the record, the view from the boulder was quite nice, and I had a definite sense of accomplishment once I made it back to the car.)

However, I have no sympathy for her complete wussitude when she falls into the seemingly shallow, slow-moving river. Aduh.... Aduhh.... And when the bad guy comes, why doesn't she tug him off balance and throw him into the river? Ingatlah ingat!! What would your mother say about letting strange men 'help' you? I'm literally laughing out loud as she turns limp in his arms. Gawd. Maybe she is some pampered palace pet.

And once she realizes what he's going to do, why doesn't she go for the face? For heaven's sake! The thing that bothers me is that it plays to every stereotype of women as being protected only by men's goodwill. Should any man choose to retract that goodwill, there'd be poontang for the takin'. This gets weirder as the scene progresses, too.

So, like Superman or Batman, Jebat hears the cry of an innocent in need and shows up. I have to admit that I really like the foot moves in silat, especially the one here where he disarms the bad guy. That was cash.

Now, I've never tried to throw a keris (my childhood attempts at dagger-throwing left marks in the walls that are still there) but either it's superbly weighted for throwing, Dang Baru was lucky or she's got skillz.

Jebat now forgets Rule #1 about being a male helping a rape survivor: don't try to pick up a crying woman who was just assaulted. Creepy. Creepy. Eww. Eww. If someone tried that on me, he'd be singing soprano for the rest of his days.

Oh, and don't do that chin thing and tell her how lucky her owner is. Sweet lard, just stop it!!

It's a relief to see our mustachioed villain. He brazenly violates the whole patron-client relationship by killing his dood after extracting what he needs. Patron provides physical and mental support in the form of gifts to his clients. That's the way it works. Of course, couldn't it parallel the sultan's callous use of his admiral? Intriguing.

(Also, how's that for men appropriating women's work? "Who did this to you?" "Pendekar raja [...] Hang Jebat..." Yeah, 'cause admitting it was a helpless lady would make you look like an effin' pussy.)

(Also also, note the crazy in Patih Kerma Wijaya's laugh and his evil-genius 'I'll get you!' speech. Next thing you know, he'll be tying our hero to the railroad tracks while revealing his master plan in dramatic monologue.)

They drag the body to the bendahara's doorstep and Demand Satisfaction, though without the glove-slap that Homer Simpson would affect in a similar situation. (A pity, really.) The bendahara looks troubled aaaaaaand CUT!

As befits a film from a cinema heavily influenced by the Indian tradition, it's time for a song in which the characters' inner feelings can safely be expressed without upsetting the social order. Dang Baru obviously is forgetting that betel (versus beetle, which is different) is nasty shite, conducive neither to romance nor oral health. Whatever.

So there it is, the clip that seems to totally confirm everything Khoo Gaik Cheng says about this film being particularly sadistic and misogynistic. But, as the next video shows, it's really complicated. Really really complicated.

It's okay to be jey!

Jey is the Thai word for vegetarian. It's the vegetarian festival now. I just got back from Phuket, where the festival was born. The back story goes thusly:

Back in the 1800s, lots of Chinese tin miners were getting sick with fever and dying. An opera troupe from the motherland was brought in to boost morale -- Bob Hope for 1800s Chinese miners. When the troupe got sick, they immediately switched to a vegetarian diet and their sickness vanished. It seems two of the nine Emperor Gods were offended, and abstinence from meat (and all other naughtiness) made them happy.

Ever since then, people have observed this regimen in the first 9 days of the 9th lunar month. They wear white and stay away from meat, sex and liquor. Some folks even give their bodies over to the gods to ride. (Interestingly, they're called horses, just like in Vodoun!) According to the TAT booklet, these are people who have either "had an intimation of impending doom" or who were "specially chosen for their moral values." They perform the same sort of feats as Tamil devotees of Murugan or Muttalmariyamman: piercing their bodies with spears, climbing knife ladders and dancing over fire (or, as I saw at one procession, lit firecrackers). They have a fixed gaze and subtle tremble like Tamil worshipers as well.

When you go into downtown Phuket, you'll see that about 3/4 of the people -- old folks all the way to little kids -- are wearing white. I even saw quite a few westerners in white, observing the festival. During processions, the horses are dressed in embroidered 'aprons' for men or Manchu costume for women.

Of course, there's tons of vegetarian food, all over the island. (Far more than in Bangkok during the same time.) During my vacation, I either dined on European dishes or veggie options. Now, here in Narathiwat, only about 20% of the population is Buddhist, much less concerned with Taoist gods as well. However, at least one temple has quite a spread available for whatever you'd like to donate. Unfortunately, it's all gone by 7:30 am, so I'll be waking up reeeeally early tomorrow to go with my friend, tiffin carriers in hand.

And that's why I'm going to bed now.

The Hindus: Chapter Four

When I was in high school, I came across an interesting insult on a Tamil supremacist forum. Somebody referred to early Indo-European speakers as 'horse herders' -- a bunch of rowdy nomads who came and crashed the Indus Valley party. My Dad, upon hearing about this term from me, decided it was perfect for the uber-Aryans of downtown Los Altos. Thus, the corner of Second and Main became Horse Herder Ground Zero and the term set to the 'Goldfinger' music. Good timez.

So as you might be guessing, this chapter, "Between the Ruins and the Text" is about Teh Aryans, breakers of enemy cities and enemies of the noseless. ("Tongueless!" grumbles my professor. "It's tongueless!") In my opinion, this whole controversy is made of fail. Doniger pretty much seems to agree. Hell, most modern scholars seem to agree. Unfortunately, the fetish of origins is probably never going to go away.

She introduces her view with a story that I've never heard before, about Vishnu and Brahma creating each other. Now, one of the most popular representations of Vishnu is him resting on his snake floaty mattress in the sea of milk, Lakshmi and/or Bhudevi massaging his feet and Brahma seated on a lotus that springs from his navel. (Dr. Bharathy in India quizzed us about the name of one of the office gofers: who is Harikumar, the son of Vishnu? I said Ayyappan, the child of Vishnu's sexy lady manifestation and Shiva's sexy guy form, but that was not the answer. It's Brahma, born from the navel-lotus of Hari!) Well, one day, Brahma and Vishnu got into an argument about who created whom. Brahma entered Vishnu and saw himself being created. Then Vishnu went into Brahma and saw himself being created. And over and over and over.

This, she explains, best represents the formation of Indian culture. Did Sanskritic horse-herders or indigenous Munda- or Dravidian-speakers originate what we now recognize as India? The answer is yes.

There's also a lot of horseplay in this chapter, as she uses the horse herders' passion for ponies versus the IVC love of unicorns (dunno about rainbows) as an argument against the Indic origins of the former. Horses don't work that great in India, so folks totally obsessed with them (and whose earliest literature is all about them) and whose linguistic kin were also obsessed with them probably had them from very early times. If they had them back in the Indus Valley, you'd think they would have put them on every seal, stamp and lump of shaped metal. But they didn't.

Sure, absence of evidence isn't proof of nonexistence, but it would take a pretty spectacular find to disprove the theory.

Myth: busted. More or less.

As usual, there was more, but that's all I wanted to share with you.

Game over.

That's right! I had to defeat many worthy enemies -- the Ministry of Labor, the RKK Explosives Division, Mother Nature and the fell Desk of Amran -- but the prize is now mine.

A video camera. I has it.

As my Oscar-winning release is still in production, let's watch a classic film from the golden age of the internet.

Eerie Premonition of the Day

I've recently discovered the Sejarah Melayu Library, and the old colonial-era travelogues and backgrounders are making excellent relaxation reading. (Well-deserved, I say, as I finish up ten Por Pohr gradebooks and corrections on 100 exams.)

I've just started In Court and Kampong by one Sir Hugh Charles Clifford, copyright 1897. I'm just getting to the part about on where I live now. Let me offer a choice quote from page 13:

"Uneasy indeed must lie the head which wears the crown of Petani!"

This is pre Anglo-Siamese treaty, of course, though he mentioned how Singgora (Songkhla) has the "dubious pleasure" of a Bangkok-sent ruler. Of course, he's probably thinking of how much better it would be to have a British ruler, but it's fun to read the present into the past.

The Hindus: Chapter 3

Mmkay... So I never did get around to doing the next part of Hang Jebat. Someday.

In this next chapter of her book, Doniger discusses the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC, as the cool kids say). Oh no, you cry. Phalluses everywhere! Enh. Not so fast. This is a chapter in which she admits her own past assumptions and lays to rest the myth that she sees phallic objects everywhere.

You know that IVC seal with the image of proto-Shiva as Pasupati? With the naughty phallus and everything? Doniger reminds us that we have no frikkin' idea what that whole seal is about. She even suggests that it might not be a phallus at all (though it sure looks like one to me). Yoga? Well, that's also how a lot of folks in South (and Southeast) Asia sit. (You know, so that you don't get dirt on your bum. I've never been able to really sit like that; my knees give out.) Two-horned moon or bull horns? Could just be a fancy hairdo or a hat. Three (or four) faces? Might be masks. Note that she's not saying that any of these are the answer -- she's showing that none of us have any answers, and we probably never will.

And those fertility goddesses? Well, does pr0n represent fertility goddesses to anyone but evo-devo losers? No, she doesn't say that they're prehistoric playmates; just that not every depiction of T&A has a religious significance.

On that note, I loved how she referenced one of the most influential books I've ever encountered, David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries, in which futuristic archaeologists discover a motel in ancient New York ('Bigapple') and try to decode its religious meaning. Not everything has a ritual meaning; sometimes a toilet seat is just a toilet seat.

There's plenty more in the chapter, but I felt that this was the most important theme: really, we don't know shite from shinola. We can make conjectures, come up with theories, argue endlessly (I'm looking at you, professor dear) and reinterpret 'til the recently-domesticated bulls come home, but we ultimately don't know. God or guy with a great 'do? Mother Earth or porn star? College of the Priests or prehistoric Walmart?

Who knows?

The Hindus: Part Three

This chapter, "Time and Space in India" is quite short. Hey, maybe my remarks will be brief as well. Could happen.

Here, she's dealing with geography, mythic and scientific. One thing that caught my eye was this sentence: "Not just land but people came to India from Africa, much later; the winds that bring the monsoon rains to India also brought the first humans to peninsular India from East Africa in around 50,000 BCE." Whoa. That's 100% new to me. Her citation is in the footnotes: "Wolpert, A New History 6. This was the civilization of the northern Soan River valley." This thread in the loom of history is relevant to my interests. Alas, MOAR is not forthcoming.

Another fun thing we see is the weird Tamil obsession with Lemuria. Though she talks about the belief that Tamil folks from Lemuria spread out and created all the great civilizations of the world, she leaves out the other theory (of more recent vintage): the lost continent connected Africa, India and Australia, as if to cling at slipping Gondwanan friends. When they realized that their continent was sinking, they moved to Africa, South India and Australia, where they became (undifferentiated groups of) Africans, Tamils and aboriginal Australians. Because everybody's black, you know. (I don't have references on this; I saw it on a Dravidianist website like, ten years ago.) The political implications of this origin story, versus the one from a century earlier focusing on the world's Great Civilizations ^(TM), are interesting, ne?

This obsession with 'we were here first!' 'nuh uh, it was us!' is a wider theme in this chapter. As Doniger comments, though, the past "...would hardly provide a charter for the present."

One last thing of interest: the traditional map of India, the "Plum-tree Continent". First, hold up -- I thought jambu meant rose apple? Even before I learned Thai, that's what I had been taught. Plus, it seemed pretty apt, when you consider the shape of rose apples and all. Anyway, phiLOLogy and botany aside, her map of the mythic world suddenly makes the idea clear to me. I always imagined the four continents differently, with India being just one 'petal'. When she draws the line across the middle of the 'flower', though, it totally makes sense. Awesome.

So, was that brief enough?

Oh, and my next project is to do the next Hang Jebat installment. It's time to meet Jebat's babymama, after all...