Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Goodbye Avril We Will Miss Seeing You.

In a move to pander to a small minority of ultras in our nation, the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage has decided to disallow the Avril Lavigne concert to be held in Malaysia citing reasons like 'it is not our culture', 'too sexy' and 'tainting our independence'. I as a citizen and an avid arts, culture and heritage lover am just taken aback that after 51 years of independence that a decision such as this can be given to justify a cancelation of one of the more decent artiste and a damn good one at her profession at that (We love you Avril, please don't mind the knuckle heads manning the government at the moment). It seems once again we will lose out to the likes of Singapore in hosting international artists and be stuck in the barren desert landscape of culture. I'm miffed and rightly so, we says we have to abide by the decision of suited politicians sitting on their ass up in the ministry to tell us what is and what is not suitable for our culture. Culture is ever evolving, it is the sum of the human experience, static and malleable and changing with the time. As a global nation we have to allow absorption of global culture, in Japan punk, rock, goth and extreme fashion including cosplay, doujinshi and anime otaku fandom is the norm and these are not native to their culture yet it resides comfortably alongside Japan's older culture without any clashes of culture. Malaysia must learn to accept that times have change and we are as diverse as the cumulative global culture since the dawn of time. WE don't want ulamas telling us what is right or wrong, we have a brain to decide, for those that disagree, go stay home and let us enjoy the show. You have a choice and you have voice your disinterest, I am here to voice out taht I disagree with you all and the Ministry's decision and that's my perogatative and choice. If we want to ghance things, maybe its times we take the bull by the balls and let our voice be heard. I'm sending an email to the ministry and though I knwo it may not change a thing and may not even be read, I hope others will go ahead as well and follow suit and let them see how many people really want the concert to go on. Their web feedback address is HERE. If thousand of mail is sent I believe that they can't not take notice of the ground level dissatisfaction.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am shocked at this news! I was just reading about Avril's change of fashion style...and feeling sad that I won't be able to catch her concert and this???

Unbelieveable! Some of our local concerts via TV3 provides more reasons for me to call for their cancellations and lifetime bans!

Too bad for Avril...Malaysia is doing a really fine job projecting itself into the 21st century :P