Amir’s Half-Easy: The Truth of the Lazy Native

Amir’s Half-Easy: The Truth of the Lazy Native

Written by Amir Hafizi


A friend of mine recently lamented that Malaysia has produced no good movies and lays the blame solely on the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS).

Now, despite its name, I can’t really blame the state of the movie industry on FINAS alone.

Granted, the agency was tasked to promote the development of Malaysian films but so far, in my opinion, nobody from FINAS has had any great idea on how to do that.

Even when someone did have an idea, it’s the ludicrous ‘let’s win an Academy Award in three years’ which is dumb and even if we achieve it, won’t change the industry much.

Or maybe my friend was confusing FINAS’ role with the Film Censorship Board of Malaysia (LPF) which has promoted piracy when they censor movies shown at cinemas and on TV, driving the IT-savvy Malaysians to seek out uncensored, sometimes illegal entertainment elsewhere.

Even if we combine the two agencies, it’s not enough to explain the doldrums of the local film industry.

I believe the responsibility is shared equally among the governing agencies, the filmmakers themselves and the Malaysian audience.

The filmmakers are mostly not churning out great work every time they do something.

Not all acting performances are great, not all scripts are the best it could be, and the money being paid to everyone, mere pittance.

So with minimal investments in money and effort, how can we get great things more consistently?

Then, we have the audience who would spend perhaps 10-20 times on foreign movies than they do local productions.

According to FINAS, in pre-pandemic 2019, total gross movie ticket sales (local and foreign) amounted to RM1.08 billion with local movies taking in RM144.71 million. Last year, gross sales was RM22 million with local films netting only RM140,000.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to spend our money in any way, shape or fashion – that is up to you whether you want to buy a Grab rider breakfast or tip him with cash, for example.

However, if we as the audience fail to strategically invest in local productions, no matter how crappy they are in its infancy, there will be no improvements for the next 400 years.

This unwillingness to even consider our role in the state of things is everywhere in the world, but very strong among Malaysians.

However, to be fair, I know of no other communities extensively to make any sort of comparison.

I can just say that from my experience, we love blaming other people or assigning responsibility on one or just a few people.

Statesman and two-time Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was admitted into IJN recently and some of the more revealing comments made on social media was along the lines of, “I still believe Dr M can save us and the country!” or “Dr M remains our last great hope!”

I am a big Dr M fan, but I believe this sort of thinking is unfair to Dr M and is ultimately damaging to the country because it shows how unwilling Malaysians are in taking responsibility for themselves and the future of this nation.

For one, Dr M is almost a century old. Let the man rest. Some of those who begged for his help just a few years before even turned their backs on him when it suited them better.

I believe he should just retire and enjoy time with his loved ones and let these ingrates fend for themselves.

Have we no shame that no one else save for a man who should have retired 50 years ago can make the changes we want in this country?

It is the same disease we see in rabid pro-Anwar/pro-Najib/pro-KJ/pro-Azmin/pro-Zahid/pro-Lim Guan Eng supporters who believe everything will be solved once their political god is in the driving seat.

Nobody ever talks about how exactly these deities can make the country better, because one of the things Malaysians hate doing is considering the type and amount of work necessary to achieve certain things.

Are these people even capable of doing anything at all, much less fulfilling the many empty promises they have made to everyone?

I see we are too lazy to even consider these questions and just designate some poor chump like these politicians we ‘worship’ to do the thinking for us.

It’s like how in Malaysian schools, the class monitor is usually the most disliked or passive student because none of the kids want the responsibility of collecting and sending exercise books to the teacher or doing any unpaid labour.

Malaysians are not lazy when it comes to doing work. Some of us are very good labourers and I have worked with many Malaysians who pay a lot of attention to the details.

What we really hate doing, is taking the responsibility of making the world a better place. We hate thinking of solutions to problems, but we love screaming about the problems themselves, sometimes because it is fashionable to pretend to be victims of our own lack of action.

We loathe to go beyond choosing someone to lead. Beyond voting for a class monitor.

This is what happened after GE14, among those who won. We thought that once we replaced the old people with other old people, then mission accomplished.

Nobody talked about the immense amount of work that lay ahead, perhaps for fear of being asked to do it.

Nobody wanted to revamp the education system, even the ones given the power to do so.

Attempts to reduce inequality in terms of wealth, access, socio-cultural stuff were abandoned in favour of politicking and backstabbing and ruthless ambition that eventually resulted in a tragic comedy or a comic tragedy that has become our lives.

It’s so sad to think of what could be accomplished if only Malaysians presented a unified front while taking responsibility for this country and what goes on in it.

But what happened was the greed and especially the laziness took root and we went again to cults of personality and here we are today, back to where we were years ago on a direct trajectory to hell and damnation.

Once everyone is burned by the eternal flames, the only thing left to do would be to point fingers on who was supposed to gather the exercise books in the first place.

Recent events have demonstrated the willingness of Malaysians to take matters into their own hands. The way Malaysians joined forces to help our most vulnerable during the pandemic and the victims of the flood are good demonstrations of the potential of not avoiding responsibility when it presents itself.

The biggest challenge, is to address the country’s biggest problem – our core values. So far, our core values reveal a lot of cruelty and stupidity and it is up to us to correct this, if we want to.

In the process, we must also shirk any worship of any icon or public figure, especially politicians. They are all useless until we find a use for them.

However, if I’m a betting man, I think when the time comes, we will again shirk all responsibility and designate untrustworthy and reptilian politicians to make the decisions for us.

They, in turn, will appoint even worse idiots to head government agencies and we will never have good Malaysian movies, which is the real tragedy here.