CULTIVATING THE CONNOTATION OF “LANGUAGE IS THE SOUL OF THE NATION” REFLECTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY TOWARDS SYNERGY OF SOLIDARITY AND HARMONISATION OF MALAYSIANS

This paper discusses the culture connotation of “Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa” (Language is the Soul of the Nation) as a reflection inseminating element that symbolises the solidarity of the national language of the Malay language in order to achieve synergies harmonisation Malaysians. The arguments were highlighted with the aim of exploring the experience of Malaysia as a country famous for its unique racial mix but had to face various challenges in order to uphold the mother tongue. Secondary data content analysis methods utilise the results of the journals’ conclusions, reports, books, interviews, online news, and other printed materials. Underlying the background of the inaugural study, the selection of significant issues discussed and justified included arguments such as (i) Attitude, awareness, commitment, and responsibility of the community towards a consensus on national language empowerment, (ii) Social media phenomenon, and the influence of mass media in sustainability national language, (iii) The negligence preservation of the artworks production and national literature and (iv) The vital role of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) (Institute of Language and Literature) in promoting the cultivation of the connotation of “Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa”. The goal of the dispute through discussion emphasised the relevance of the drafting of the National Language Act 1963/67 which proves the state’s commitment to maintaining the continuity of the status of the Malay language through enforcement of legislation. The future direction of such a study should focus on the essence of further debate to support the mother tongue as one of the greatest treasures and heritage for Malaysians.

Neighbourhood exceptionalism and racial liberalism in the Great Society city: integration as civic showpiece at St Louis’ LaClede Town

This article analyses the role of LaClede Town, a nationally lauded housing development in St Louis (USA), in metropolitan and national contests over race, segregation and urban equity from the 1960s to 1990s. Built on the site of a massive slum-clearance project, the federally supported complex gained widespread fame for its startlingly heterogeneous racial mix and ostensibly colour-blind lifestyles. As the article argues, the quasi-utopian language applied to the neighbourhood illustrates the contours and limitations of a 1960s racial liberalism that sought to overcome structural inequalities through face-to-face neighbourly contact. Yet the project's 1990s demise signals that older ideology's supersession by a newly dominant urban neoliberalism.

Soldiers’ Song

The use of popular music in post-Vietnam Hollywood war films has varied depending on the war being depicted. Swing, the popular music of World War II, goes almost entirely unrepresented in films depicting that war. Films about Vietnam have exploited the rich resource of popular music from the 1960s to characterize significant racial and class differences among American soldiers, typically pitting black Motown and soul music against white country music. Draft scripts for Apocalypse Now reveal how that film might have used late 1960s rock to emphasize the pathological nature of the American effort in Vietnam. Popular music in films about the all-volunteer, post-hip hop military suggest that racial tensions have abated, with a racial mix of soldiers enjoying a variety of musics. Films about twenty-first-century soldiers have almost no popular music, eliding well-documented practices of contemporary soldiers and denying civilian audiences potential points of connection by way of popular culture.

History, Cultural Memory and Intermediality in Radu Jude’s Aferim!

A historical drama that can be interpreted at the juncture of theoretical discourses (heritage film, auteur film), genres (historical film, western, road movie) and representational modes (connecting to, but subverting the master narrative of Romanian historical cinema), Radu Jude’s Aferim! (2015) has attracted the attention of the international public by the unique response that it gives to the tradition of representation of the (Romanian) historical past. Its unmatched character even within New Romanian Cinema can be attributed to the fact that it does not focus on tensions of the post-communist condition or their antecedents in the recent communist past; instead, it goes back in history to a much earlier period, to the Romanian ancien régime, after the Ottoman occupation and before the abolition of Gypsy slavery, only to point at the historical roots of current social problems. Through its ingenuous (inter)medial solutions (black-and-white film, with an implied media-archaeological purport; period mise en scène but with an assumed artificiality and constructedness; a simple linear plot infused with a dense dialogue in archaic Romanian, drawn from a multitude of literary and historical sources; a sweeping panorama of 19th-century Wallachian society presented in a succession of tableau compositions), Radu Jude’s ironical-critical collage defetishizes the traditional historical iconography and debunks the mythical national imaginary, unveiling the traumatic history of an ethnic and racial mix.1