Sepet, Directed by Yasmin Ahmad

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In one sense, ideology is an approach made by a filmmaker to expose his/her audience to a certain issue that might be never exposed by other filmmakers. These filmmakers want their audience to understand what they are trying to imply in their films. In other words, ideology is defined as one person’s belief where he/she (most of the time is the filmmaker itself) tries to pinpoint what message(s) his/her film aims to convey and communicate about a particular issue(s). For example, there are certain issues might be discussed in films, such as social, political, gender, race, sexuality and other issues related in our world nowadays. To put it differently, ideologies derive from emotions or feelings of a person towards the world and about human society, and therefore, these ideologies are not necessarily bound by the rules of logic (Pramaggiore and Wallis 310-311). Similarly, these ideology approaches in films able to shape the relationship between an individual and culture, influencing their ideas about others and society. Nevertheless, Pramaggiore and Wallis (310-311) depict that ideologies provide the realisation of the society towards the justification for the differential treatment of some within a society, where the inequality seems to promote the social dominance of one group over another.
In Sepet (Yasmin Ahmad, 2004), a lot of ideology approaches and issues which seem to be highly controversial in Malaysia, especially in Malay-Muslim culture are portrayed in this film. This film has brought the attention of local viewers, with good and bad responses from across the country. Interestingly, the issues that she brought up are considered taboo and not acceptable mostly from the public and the media, and eventually the government....

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...ss sensitive issues as her ideologies, and portrays them publicly in Sepet. Ultimately, Sepet made her won many international awards, as well as the Best Screenplay and Best Film awards in the 18th Malaysian Film Festival. Perhaps most important, as I stated at the beginning of this essay, her efforts in Sepet are not really appreciated by most of the Malaysian society, especially the Malay-Muslims regarding her approaches of ideology in portraying the unity of multiracialism and religions.

Works Cited

Sepet. Dir. Yasmin Ahmad. Perf. Sharifah Amani, Ng Choo Seong, Ida Nerina, Harith Iskander, Tan Mei Ling and Adibah Noor. Leo Burnett Malaysia, 2004. Film.
Ahmad, Orked and Jovian Lee Lit Hong. “Yasmin How You Know?”. Kuala Lumpur: Leo Burnett, 2012. Print.
Pramaggiore, Maria and Tom Wallis. Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Laurence King, 2011. Print.

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