“Bie zai tiqi” and You Mean the World to Me: Two Subversive Sinophone Malaysian Metatexts

Antonio Paoliello

doi:10.1515/culture-2020-0006

Abstract

AbstractThis article aims at exploring the subversive nature of two Sinophone Malaysian cultural products, namely “Bie zai tiqi” (2002) a short story by Ho Sok Fong and You Mean the World to Me (2017), a full-length feature film by director Saw Teong Hin. I argue that, despite their differences, both fictional products use powerful metafictional and metanarrative devices to challenge factuality. In doing so, they not only blur the fine line between fiction and reality, but they also question cultural power dynamics and ethnic politics in Malaysia. Moreover, they defy the truthfulness of Mandarin as the preferred Sinitic cultural language as well as the idea that, in Malaysia, literature and film can be considered Malaysian only if produced in Malay, the official language of the country. By performing an analysis of the linguistic choices made by Ho Sok Fong and Saw Teong Hin, I will suggest that both the short story and the feature film analysed in this article use metafiction and metanarration to subvert widely-accepted, yet problematic, notions of national culture and common ethnic language.

Highlights

When reading a work of fiction, the reader focuses on the plot, the characters, the descriptions, sometimes even on the overall formal structure and on the linguistic aspects of the story itself, but he or she is seldom called upon to reflect on the text as discourse rather than as a story
With the intention of bringing the margins (Sinophone Malaysia) into the theoretical discourse on metanarration and metafiction, that I analyse the role of the writer, the narrator, the reader and the narration itself in “Bie zai tiqi” (別再提起, “Never mention it again”) a short story written by Ho Sok Fong (賀淑芳 He Shufang) in 2002 and the act of filmmaking in You Mean the World to Me (海墘新路 Hái Kînn Sin Lōo) a semi-autobiographical feature film by director Saw Teong Hin (蘇倧興 Su Zongxing) released in 2017
As Sinophone Malaysian cultural products in which the meta- component is central, “Bie zai tiqi” and You Mean the World to Me differ in many ways: from the artistic medium, to the language used, to the mode of circulation; and most importantly, they both share a subversive purpose

Summary

Introduction

When reading a work of fiction, the reader focuses on the plot, the characters, the descriptions, sometimes even on the overall formal structure and on the linguistic aspects of the story itself, but he or she is seldom called upon to reflect on the text as discourse rather than as a story. With the intention of bringing the margins (Sinophone Malaysia) into the theoretical discourse on metanarration and metafiction, that I analyse the role of the writer, the narrator, the reader and the narration itself in “Bie zai tiqi” (別再提起, “Never mention it again”) a short story written by Ho Sok Fong (賀淑芳 He Shufang) in 2002 and the act of filmmaking in You Mean the World to Me (海墘新路 Hái Kînn Sin Lōo) a semi-autobiographical feature film by director Saw Teong Hin (蘇倧興 Su Zongxing) released in 2017 These two fictional works differ in several ways, starting from the art forms themselves (literature and cinema), I suggest that they both use powerful devices to challenge factuality, blurring, in the mind of the reader and the audience, the fine line between fiction and reality. I believe that comparably to mainland Chinese literary and filmic production by Han artists, Sinophone Malaysian metadiscourses, too, have a direct connection with the traditional metasensibilities mentioned by Liang and Zhao

The Challenges of Sinophone Malaysian Cultural Production

Conclusion

Findings

Works cited