Provoked & Gadoh

The title of this post refers to a movie that I watched today for my Women Literature class.As a TESL student,we watch movies almost every semester.Several in one semester in fact,for us to evaluate and analyze it.This semester I've watched Spirited Away(which was of course utterly cute & a great movie) for my Children & Young Adult literature and also today,for my Women Lit class,Provoked.Provoked is about domestic violence,based on the true story of Kiran who was abused by her husband for 10 years before she snapped and set him on fire.

I won't tell much about the movie because I want you guys to watch it because although critics wasn't so nice about it,to me it was a necessary movie to be watched by all women.Suffice to say,throughout the movie I kept saying Malay swear words like Babi & sial inside because what the husband did was just shocking.At one point,I felt like taking an axe to his head!It shocked and appalled me to the deepest core because none of my family members have been physically abuse by their husbands.Like what Kiran said in the movie,suffering in silence is not the answer.Oh,the whole class couldn't stop laughing over the bad subtitles(ye la,kami kan pelajar TESL).Case in point:The word 'tumultuous' was translated into '2 month'...What the fish???

It's 8 pm and I only had my meal of the day a few minutes ago.This is due to the fact that I had my Current Issue in Edu presentation at 2pm and I was sort of nervous but the reason that I didn't get to eat until just now is because I was busy preparing and perfecting my slides this morning.And no,I didn't do it last minute but ACTUALLY I decided to change the WHOLE thing a few hours before because I found a much better topic to present.

My lecturer,Pn.Khadijah is amazing because she gave me the opportunity to present WHATEVER issue that I could found on current school situation which was super cool because I get to decide what I wanted to present about.I had a talked about the presentation(with my grp member) & what she wanted out of it a few days before I presented and it was refreshing because she was so encouraging that I made the presentation not on something that we've learned throughout studying.Because initially my group was suppose to present on the type of schools in our country & the system in it.

So I choose to talked about school safety but how racial discrimination and bullying correlates with it.Before I stared my presentation,I used a clip of this movie that I thought Malaysians should definitely watch.Memang pedas ayat-ayat dalam filem itu.But I thought it was necessary because it showed the perceptions about the many races in our country of the 'other'.The movie that I'm talking about is Gadoh by Namron & Brenda Danker that was made for KOMAS(the Malaysian Human Rights org).The movie is available on dvd & it was shown sometime last May but since last semester was the 'rasa macam nak mati' semester because of the workload,I didn't actually realize that it came out.huhu




I chose this part of the movie to present to my lecturer & colleagues because the confessions that they made are exactly what the perceptions of some of us have over each other.Also,the part where Khalil's dad was talking to the Datuk shows that racial discrimination(the UN doesn't use the word racism but racial discrimination instead which I thought is more politically correct) is embedded through our own parents and family members as harsh as it sounds.

I thought some of the confessions,especially the disgruntled Malay guy who kept lambasting the Chinese was effing funny.My advice,take the movie with a pinch of salt because this IS happening & the perceptions that are being said & portrayed in the movie is very true.