Zombie Film's Success Reanimates Native Pride

 

A Malaysian zombie horror film earned the praise of the nation’sprime minister has won a string of film festival awards in March this year, but so far the loudest voices in support of the movie have been from those who take special pride in the film’s positive portrayal of a strong Southeast Asian tribe that had been deeply affected by the real-world historical trauma of “First Encounter.”

The indigenous Iban tribe living within the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo — which itself is divided three ways between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei — served as the setting and main source of actors for Belaban Hidup: Infeksi Zombie (Fight For Life: Zombie Infection). 

Belaban Hidup is also special in featuring the indigenous Iban language, the mother tongue that is still spoken by the population of native Iban that has dwindled down to just a million people.

The Iban were once respected in the region as a fierce and relentless warrior culture that practiced headhunting and whom the British colonizers who saw them as fearsome pirates. Under colonial pressures the Iban abandoned both their warrior culture and their headhunting practices, with most members of the tribe now identifying as members of a Christian ethnic minority within predominantly Islamic nations. Industrialization and the environmental degradations brought about by the palm oil industry have likewise had a negative impact upon the tribe, which is a branch of the Dayak indigenous people. The British called them “the Sea Dayaks.”  

The zombie film was written and co-directed by the 45-year-old Malaysian-Chinese filmmaker Ray Lee who was born on the island and his wife Misha Minut Panggau, who is a native Iban. They had been working on bringing this film together since 2016. This is the first film to be produced by a member of the tribe.

Belaban Hidup won in the Horror and Science Fiction category at the 2021 Singapore World Film Carnival on March 18. The film went on to win Best Feature Film and Best Horror Film awards at the International Symbolic Art Film Festival (Saint Petersburg, Russia) and Best Feature Film at the 2021 Canadian Diversity Film Festival. Belaban Hidup was also nominated for the Best Feature Film at the Los Angeles Marina Del Rey Film Festival.

"We are also anxiously waiting whether we can get through the nominations for several other international film festivals such as the Paris Film Festival, Hollywood Blood Horror Festival, and the Swedish Film Award," said co-director Ray Lee.

“We deserve our own film industry,” Misha Minut Panggau told the press after the win in Singapore. “I always hope this is the kind of work that I do that will spur more interest among Dayak youths who want to get involved in the film industry,” she said.

 “Malaysian corporates don’t really support the local film industry and prefer to throw hundreds of millions into foreign productions,” her husband added, expressing hope that this zombie film will have a positive influence not only on the Malaysian film industry, but for the Iban people who might expect increased interest and dollars from the nation’s tourism sector.

For the pre-colonial Iban, headhunting was ceremonially used to end the long and strict period of mourning after a death, especially the passing of a leader. Headhunting was also a way to celebrate the birth of a son, though the practice of taking a head was mostly a sign or martial valor and gave great prestige to the winning warrior.

Within the Malaysian film industry this zombie narrative is the first major and internationally released film to so heavily rely upon Iban involvement, from the production to the acting. Indeed, only two other filmsused the Iban community on Sarawak as a setting for their stories: Chinta Gadis Rimba (Love of a Forest Maiden, produced in Singapore in 1958) by L. Krishnan, a forbidden love story between an Iban girl and a Malay lover; and Bejalai (1987) by Stephen Teo, which was the first Malaysian movie in the Iban language, and focused on the ritual journey that Iban boys take when transitioning into adulthood.  

Some reviewers have indentified Belaban Hidup as a modern tribute to the gruesome Italian zombie and cannibal films of the late 1970s and 1980s, and Southeast Asian jungle horrors like the 1980 Indonesian cult film Primitif by Sisworo Gautama Putra. South China Morning Post reviewer Marco Ferrarese speculated Belaban Hidup would please genre fans who are eager for “a unique ethnic spin on the much-abused zombie invasion trope.”

But unlike many other filmmakers working within the confines of the zombie narrative, the producers of Belaban Hidup chose to highlight beautifully envisioned jungle and river settings, and a sharp focus on the Iban tribal pride in their historical traditions as a warrior culture. Does this film maintain the tradition of nihilism that has been an almost inescapable part of the narrative since the arrival of the shambling cannibal zombies of Night of the Living Dead?

Belaban Hidup may in its own way be using the zombie narrative to address the history of indigenous encounters with invading foreign powers, though in this horror movie the foreign intruder is a mysterious scientific research organization that moves from Madagascar to Borneo to set up a hidden laboratory and uses the offer of “free medical treatment” to locals as the bait to hook human test subjects. When a group of captive teenage orphans manages to escape, they also inadvertently unleash the zombie infection. The escapees flee to the jungle and seek the help of the tribe.

While the heavy focus upon the Iban is praised by many throughout Malaysia, students of cinema might someday examine why the filmmakers chose to also rely upon a number of non-Iban actors, including non-Malaysian actors such as Slovakian star Katrina Grey and Indonesian singer Tegar. Other well-known actors include Pablo Amirul and Cassidy Panggau, who join native Ibans who have never before acted in a film.

The larger Dayak population is concentrated in Brunei, the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, and Sarawak. But tribal communities can also be found in Malaysia, mostly in Sarawak state, with smaller communities in Sabah and other parts of west Malaysia. Borneo Island, in the South China Sea, is not far from the territory claimed by China.

See the trailer for Belaban Hidup here.

Is "The Sadness" Just Below the Surface?

The film trailer for "The Sadness" is intriguing. It gives away just enough for us to know this soon-to-release Taiwan horror film is a "rage virus" zombie narrative. Of course, that much is in the press release that says “The Sadness” is centered upon a highly contagious virus that rapidly mutates, breaking down people’s inhibitions and encouraging the infected to act upon their very worst impulses.

My initial thoughts on this kind of film coming from a Taiwanese director are all about timeliness and relevance. By “timeliness” of course I'm referring to the global experience of the coronavirus pandemic that to date has reached over 86 million people worldwide, with some 1.85 million deaths. And while Taiwan has not experienced the worst of the pandemic — as compared to neighboring China — the “reminder” of the invisible infectious agent is forever visible in the masked faces of everyone in public spaces.

Adding to the ongoing fear of sickness and death from this new coronavirus is the rapid rate of viral mutation that has resulted in a new strain now making its way out of South Africa that is not only more contagious but also has the possibility of being resistant to the recently developed vaccines. It is not a far cry to say that most people around the world have never experienced anything as surprising or terrifying as this current crisis.

While Taiwan has been exceptionally effective in preventing a mass “domestic” outbreak, it was also the earliest nation to recognize the nightmare that was slowly developing in the city of Wuhan, and to see most straightforwardly the heavy handed response used to contain the epidemic. What most frightened Taiwan witnesses was their proximity to Wuhan (a mere 945 kilometers from Taipei) and the close flight connectivity between Taiwan and the China. If any of China’s neighbors were most likely to experience an early outbreak, it would be Taiwan.

On top of that, there was the mass frustration at seeing how the World Health Organization refused to acknowledge the Taiwan CDC’s initial public warnings about a dangerous new “atypical pneumonia” outbreak (during a period when China’s authorities were trying to cover up the epidemic) surely must have given the Taiwan public an overwhelming feeling of being ostracized as a nation to the point of invisibility on the global stage. 

This assumption of a “collective” experience is supported by academic observations of Taiwan as a democracy in which the processes of “societalization” work well, meaning a strong identification exists between sociocultural and political-institutional bodies so that reforms and transformations move in both directions and a high degree of trust exists between the civil society and the bureaucratic state.

With a total population of nearly 24 million, Taiwan is a mountainous island with extremely crowded urban centers on the coastal flatlands. The hyper-connected citizenry has for all of their "contemporary" history experienced intense, constant economic and political (domestic and international) stresses. As the WHO’s “ghosting” of the nation’s official medical representatives demonstrated all too clearly, Taiwan’s democratically elected government is isolated from the global structures of nation state diplomacy. At the domestic social level this results in an orphan-like experience that a majority of citizens finds quite alarming.

This sense of isolation enhances the anxiety that everyday Taiwanese feel when the China’s official spokespersons broadcast threats of martial conquest. The frequency of Chinese military incursions into Taiwan’s territorial “defense zone” has become so common that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense now publishes these numbers on its website — demonstration of the phenomenon of “societalization” through which the public powerfully identifies with the institutions dedicated to their protection.

China’s steady expressions of aggression may have had the ironic consequence of pushing to 67 percent the number of people who assume a distinctly Taiwanese identity, an increase from 45 percent reported some 12 years earlier, according to a survey conducted in 2020 by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. This trend is especially acute among the island’s younger generation aged 18 to 29, says political scientist Eleanor M. Albert.

Some observers might say that strong emotional expressions are part of the Taiwanese cultural makeup, but I would be reluctant to adopt such a generalization. If anything, what I see from my vantage point in Taiwan is how easily American citizens submit themselves to divisive public outbursts motivated by PACs and conspiracy hacks. By comparison the average Taiwanese citizen is much less prone to public displays of extreme fervor. Even participants at mass political rallies display a willingness to restrict themselves to performing according to the styles scripted by event organizers.

Might this be why Taiwan’s media organizations respond so strongly to even small and seemingly random public "outbursts" of passion, rage, and aggression? For example, social media sites recently found great delight in news media reports of a young woman who got into a fistfight with a security guard after refusing to wear a mask on the subway, or the elderly man who tried to remove a woman's caged hamster from the priority seating and ended up fighting with the pet owner.  News consumers viewed these incidents as ridiculous examples of individuals behaving badly in public places.

Of course, this same viewing audience was entirely justified for taking more seriously the reports of an incident on the mass transit in 2014 when an attacker stabbed 28 subway passengers with a knife, killing four of them. Even today most subway cars carry warning signs telling riders to use any object available to defend themselves, from backpacks to fire extinguishers.  Unfortunately this was not the only incident of an individual exploding into violence on a public transit system: as recently as 2019 an emotionally unstable passenger killed apoliceman on a long-distance train.

Both of these incidents pale in comparison to the shocking event in 2016 when a man pulled a child from her bicycle and beheaded her in front of her mother.  That incident sent shockwaves of horror throughout Taiwanese society.

Yes, these public assaults suggest shortcomings in Taiwan’s mental healthcare system. But these outbursts of violence from seemingly “ordinary” people behaving badly in less-than-extraordinary circumstances can also be understood as symbolic of what can happen to any of us when the stresses of survival become too overbearing and we flip over into rage. Neuroscientists are among the first to point out that heightened degrees of anger can bring into play a temporary insanity, leaving even the most mild-mannered among us prone to wrathful acts of violence.

Is it fair to ponder that Taiwan citizens undergoing not only the daily stresses of socioeconomic survival in crowded urban settings during a pandemic while also carrying upon their shoulders existentialist anxieties about their shared future as a democratic nation may be especially open to extreme breakdowns of civility?

All this is a long and roundabout way of suggesting that “The Sadness,” due for theatrical release in Taiwan on January 22 (2021), may be a cinematic commentary on the stresses being experienced by Taiwanese citizens every day. The film can probably be seen as an expression of the fear we never talk about, our worries about the fragility of social civility and the institutional structures that protect us from our neighbors, and maybe even from ourselves. 

Isn’t that an important part of most post-apocalyptic texts?  In Taiwan, where the stresses run especially high, we all must have at one time or another entertained morbid thoughts of what would happen to our now-peaceful society if even just a few of our neighbors were to psychologically break beneath these pressures.  If that’s true, “The Sadness” is very much what we are afraid of.