Being Modern, Malay, and Muslim in the Movies

Serious analyses of media, especially popular media, and how those media are being negotiated can provide insight into broader social and political change. Media provide us with an arena where global meta-forces - globalization, politics, economics, etc. - intersect with daily life. Analyzing wider social and political-economic issues in Malaysian politics using Malay language cinema as a media example illustrates this point. In this paper the role of Malay language cinema as being both a catalyst for and receiver of Malay lower middle class dissatisfactions with authority, especially in terms of the Malaysian government’s attempts at religious authority, bring new insights into the intersection between media, politics, religion, and society in Malaysia.