Abstract
Using Martin Esslin’s authoritative study, The Theatre of the Absurd (1961/1980), as a framework to read Salleh Ben Joned’s play, The Amok of Mat Solo (The amok of Mat Solo: A play. Silverfish Books, 2011), this chapter is predicated on two primary objectives, namely to demonstrate how the text, on the one hand, inclines towards the theatre of the absurd of postwar Europe and, on the other, concurrently indigenizes this inclination to address local concerns related to the sociopolitical situation of a postcolonial nation. In the case of the former, emphasis will be given to the formal features and aesthetic techniques enlisted by Salleh’s play that establishes its association with the absurdist tradition. The latter, on the other hand, will involve investigating the cultural motifs engaged by the play—specifically the kampong, the Malay hero, and amok—to elicit the ideological significance embedded in it. Finally, to conclude my discussion, I will briefly analyse the play’s closing scene in terms of how it implicates ambiguity to compromise closure.
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Notes
- 1.
Space prevents a detailed discussion of the politicization of the culture in Malaysia that was precipitated by the country’s only racial riot in 1969. Readers interested in the subject should consult Tham (1981), whose essay addresses the literary scene, and Tan (1992), who focuses exclusively on the performing arts.
- 2.
- 3.
Adapted from his seminal study, The Theatre of the Absurd, published a year later. References to the latter in this essay will be from its third edition (1980).
- 4.
Esslin’s inclusion of Camus’s philosophy as one of the theatre of the absurd’s foundations is largely motivated by his assumption of Camus as an existentialist philosopher (he is not) and interpretation of suicide in Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (1975) as an acceptable, even heroic, response to the absurd, which is clearly a misreading. As later scholarly reassessments of Camus have conceded, far from endorsing suicide, The Myth of Sisyphus is, in truth, fundamentally against it, and is in fact paradoxically advocating acceptance of the absurd—to not “believe that there is meaning and purpose where there is none”—so that in doing so, “we can [then] revolt against the absurd and create meaning and purpose for ourselves” (Bennett 2011, p. 11). In other words, only by accenting to the absurd can we then defy it, which although ultimately futile nevertheless provides our existence with meaning and purpose in an otherwise meaningless and purposeless world. For this reason, just as Camus suggests that we “must imagine Sisyphus happy” (Camus 1975, p. 111) despite having to ceaselessly repeat the punishment meted out to him by the gods, we must imagine the absurdist characters happy despite their unrelenting metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition to which they belong. In the end, notwithstanding the dissimilarity in ideology, that most absurdist plays can subscribe to both a misreading, or a corrective reading, of The Myth of Sisyphus is largely because their principal character(s) rarely end in death, much less suicide (an example of an exception would be Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead [1966]).
- 5.
The abandonment of such devices would partly explain absurdist theatre’s often fantastical plot and enigmatic use of language. Ionesco’s Rhinoceros (1959), in which the inhabitants of an entire town transform one by one into rhinoceroses until only the protagonist is left, clearly exemplifies the former, while the latter is a familiar feature in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953).
- 6.
- 7.
The other compulsory prop is the power pylon. While the TV screen is predominated by slogans and press headlines, it also describes Mat Solo’s off-stage activities for segueing purpose, and at one point, even quotes Karl Kraus (Salleh 2011, p. 30), a well-known Austrian writer.
- 8.
Incidentally, these examples and others mentioned in the play were actual slogans that dominated the country’s media landscape in the late 80s and 90s.
- 9.
A recent example is the slogan Boleh! or “Malaysia Can Do It!”, which became prominent in the 1990s and has since become part of the country’s standard vocabulary. Not only has it been parodied and banalized countless times, it is now used more in relation to the country’s shortcomings (e.g., the high rate of traffic accidents in the country is because drivers in Malaysia Boleh!) rather than achievements. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this slogan originated from a marketing campaign promoting a health beverage (Maf73 2011).
- 10.
In Malaysia, to qualify as Malay, a person must be Muslim according to Article 160 of the Constitution. Apostasy would mean the loss of privileges associated with being Malay based on the ethnicity’s status as “sons of the soil” (or bumiputra), another favourite target of Salleh. This circumstance does not apply to the other ethnic groups, whose religious freedom is enshrined in the country’s Constitution, specifically Articles 3 and 11.
- 11.
Anwar’s dismissal was allegedly for sodomy. In actual fact, however, it was the culmination of a power struggle between himself and Mahathir.
- 12.
The then ruling party representing the Malays, and to which Mahathir and Anwar belonged, was UMNO (United Malays National Organization), whose greatest contender when it came to politicizing Islam was (and still is) the ultra-Islamic PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia/Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party). Their roles became reversed in a way when the contending coalition (Pakatan Harapan/Alliance of Hope) comprising a PAS split-off party, National Trust Party, won the 2018 election, thus overthrowing the UMNO-led coalition for the first time in Malaysia after sixty years of independence.
- 13.
Since adultery amongst Muslims is a punishable crime in Malaysia (under Syariah law), religious authorities would periodically conduct raids in hotels and even intrude into private homes with the intention of catching wrongdoers in the act and arrest them. This practice, however, has since been abolished by the government as of 2018.
- 14.
Respectively, precipitated by the country’s only racial riot to date, the mass arrest effected under the Internal Security Act and suspension of three major local presses by the state to suppress widespread dissension, and the Asian Financial Crisis.
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Ng, A.H.S. (2021). The Absurdist Imagination and Its Indigenization in Salleh Ben Joned’s The Amok of Mat Solo. In: Quayum, M.A. (eds) Reading Malaysian Literature in English. Asia in Transition, vol 16. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5021-5_7
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