IT’S been quite a month for Malaysian politics – drama, intrigue, backstabbing – the usual stuff of love triangles and passionate trysts. It’s nothing new really; it’s littered time and time again in the usual tropes of TV soap dramas, pulp novels, and pop ballads.

Political pundits who have one finger on the pulse of things who wax lyrical and speculate about the bigger picture have often made me ask this: does life imitate art or art imitate life when it comes to local politics and the media? Who “follows” who?

The first half of the question – life imitates art – is also known as an anti-mimesis – the opposite of the Aristotelian mimesis, which posits that “beauty” resides in the external world itself and that art merely represents or articulates that already present “beauty” in some form or another – a perspective I can bet my bottom ringgit is the assumption that the majority of people will often make about art.

We could spend all day stroking our chins in philosophical dialogue over bottomless teh tarik and kretek about this but that’s not what I’m interested in for now – although I am a firm believer that philosophy as a compulsory subject should be introduced into our school curriculum (yes, school, not college or university) because a meaningful life is an inquisitive one.

What I am interested in inquiring is: how far down the rabbit hole are we as a populace willing to follow political punditry into the proverbial sunset without taking ownership of the subject of the punditry – politicians?

I often joke I never signed up for Netflix (I still haven’t) or follow any long-running television series (I’ve never watched a single episode of Game of Thrones) because we already have the best long-running series full of all the qualities of top shelf entertainment: Malaysian politics.

And the best thing is that it’s free, thrown at you even if you don’t want to follow it or care. You can’t escape its reach. You’ve probably witnessed how passionate people get when they talk politics with each other, especially among relatives.

Back to political punditry, I too like, like most of you, follow the news piously (I am a news junkie) and love to catch up on the speculations and predictions – following politics is akin to following your favourite teams or players in sports. The only difference is that it’s at the expense of your vote, your voice, your representation.

But when I divorce myself from this distraction, I can’t help but also ask: what and how can we channel this punditry and pull ourselves out of the rabbit hole creatively?

Let’s face it, the ones who benefit (or suffer the repercussions of the attention) from this constant and repetitive political news cycle (businesses and investors aside) are politicians; they have ceased to be a “person” and are now really “characters” of our favourite long-running series.

It’s all “wayang” and “sandiwara” as Malays say and it’s true – all politics is performance. But what about some of us watching the entire show – can’t we make it our own and spit it out back?

Well, dear reader, we can – artists can and should produce works that are political in nature, which also encompasses broader categories from everyday politics to gender politics, and not just “party politics” alone, the common interpretation of what “politics” means in Malaysia.

Artists respond to the times they live in, not just the trends and demands of the “market” and “industry” (gosh, I hate that word but what to do?).

It doesn’t take a lot to be branded “controversial”, “daring” or “rebellious” as a musician or singer-songwriter in Malaysia – I’ve been described as this on a regular basis and I’m still perplexed by it.

Just calling a spade a spade somehow grants you some notoriety (I’m not complaining, it’s become my “marketing” or “brand”... urgh another word that makes me nauseous).

Nevertheless, politics itself is an interesting form of inspiration if you know how to harness it and are willing to not put on an “act” – which is what a lot of “entertainers” are won’t to do.    

Back to the question of does life imitate art or vice versa, I’m going with the former: life does indeed imitate art. Just as ideologies work when we aren’t aware of their presence, so is art in how it has come to function, even more so in our hypermediated world where one may also question: what is “reality”?

That the arts in Malaysia is in the state that is now is exactly what The Man prescribed because artists are powerful and closest to the populace – more than any politician will ever be – and that’s what makes art a potentially formidable force against political tyranny. 

To be succinct, all I’m saying is that yes politics, particularly party politics, is an important part of the news we should be in tune with but let’s expand and develop the range of our appreciation to engage and laugh at ourselves more through these “characters” – it’s a form that’s well and alive among our stand-up comedians and in the visual arts (arguably already present in some of our traditional art forms for centuries).

It’s a healthier way of not only engaging and coping with politics but also encouraging to witness how creatively subversive Malaysians (not just artists – check out Twitter) can and are able to be – the talent to turn frustrations into catharsis is in us all.

Political punditry has the potential and talent to be a uniquely subversive Malaysian art form – a reconstituted and revived version of what political scientist James C. Scott described as the “weapons of the weak” (which was based on field work in a Malaysian village to begin with).

If this is the best of what we got (party politics), then let’s encourage more people to use them (aside from creative people), especially those below 18, to our advantage to entertain ourselves to restore our collective sanity at their symbolic expense.

We need continuity in the next generation. Your voice does not end with the vote – democracy needs active participation, be it symbolic or on the ground.

It’s a long-distance run, not a sprint. We need the cultural stamina and that can be harnessed from cultural resistances.

We, the people, are the ones who put them there, after all. Use them. They’re ours for the picking. – April 2, 2021.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.