Authentic Muslima, the national imaginary of Bruneian cinema and Yasmine (dir. Siti Kamaluddin 2014)

ABSTRACT Amid concerns about the disappearance of national/cultural specificity due to globalisation, this paper questions the notion of Bruneian cinema as a distinct (if emerging) nationalised imaginary, using the example of Brunei’s first feature-length commercial film, Yasmine (Siti Kamaluddin 2014). Many Asian cinemas have de-territorialised, obsequiously promoting the secular, democratic norms of mainstream Hollywood, but the Sultanate, with its national philosophy of MIB (Malay Islamic Monarchy) and its recent implementation of Sharia Law, would, some Western critics apparently expect, push Islamic ideologies for its state-sanctioned media, including traditionally repressive, misogynistic expectations of the ‘authentic’ Muslima [Ahmed, Leila. 1999. “Women Living under Muslim Laws, Dossier 25.” A Border Passage. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. http://wrrc.wluml.org/node/465]. As with some Middle Eastern countries, such Western critics suggest, Bruneian women may be forced to cover themselves; abstain from driving, education or other means of self-empowerment; and submit to harsh, court-imposed punishments for sexual promiscuity; with the media duly promoting such norms. At the very least, Brunei’s entertainment media might soon resemble Islamic Turkey’s ‘Milli cinema’, which ‘brought Islam back into the movies and showed respect for Islam [and in which a] common theme [ … ] was to show characters that had adopted western values but who became unhappy and unsatisfied by those values’ [Yorulmaz, Bilal, and William L. Blizek. 2014. “Islam in Turkish Cinema.” Journal of Religion and Film 18 (2): 8]. What then of Yasmine, a Brunei government-funded film from a female director about a martial arts-obsessed schoolgirl who happily defies her father, rarely wears a veil, enthusiastically chases boys and drives a racy, eye-catching car? I ask how this national cultural artefact sits within the theocracy’s attempts to maintain its citizenry’s adherence to the tenets of Islam, given its foregrounding of a narrative promoting female self-empowerment? Furthermore, this paper asks why Brunei has failed to ride the digital film-making revolution, to the extent Lacaba states ‘Brunei has no film industry to speak of’ [2000. The Films of ASEAN. ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information]. Inconclusively perhaps, I propose this recent advance stems from a benevolent monarch’s commendable efforts to modernise, rather than historicise, Islam in Brunei generally and MIB, including Sharia Law, specifically, or else is part of an elaborate ruse to convince the Western world that women will not become second-class citizens in the new Brunei, ruled as it may be according to traditionally barbaric and misogynistic Sharia Law.