‘Flying Butter’ to open closed minds

THE indie film, Mentega Terbang, has drawn many comments from Malays from all walks of life. There have been opinions from political personalities, religious clerics and many, many people on social media.

Reading the comments, which have been mostly negative, I have to wonder what kind of education has produced such narrow-minded views and such intolerance for something that has not deprived the people of billions of ringgit, does not insult any race of people, and merely shows the honest curiosity of a teen facing family hardship in the shape of a terminally ill parent.

Our education at the university level has clearly left out any sense of freedom of inquiry without any malice or intent to insult.

I would like to recall how my architecture education prepared me not only for a career but also taught me many things about life.

Firstly, I was taught the rule of “form following function”. This sacred architecture dictum was coined by an engineer but popularised by the “prophet of modern architecture”, Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924) in the United States. As a student, I read – without being told to by any professor – two books by Sullivan, An Autobiography of an Idea (1924) and Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (1901). I’m quite sure 99.9% of architecture graduates here have never read these books.

What “form follows function” asks students to question is the direct relationship between the form of a building and its intended function. Sounds simple right? Well, let’s take my favourite subject, mosque architecture. Why must we have minarets when there is no need to climb higher to make the call to prayer when loudspeakers are available nowadays? The Malays of old did not use a minaret but had a Rumah Taboh, or drum, instead and would sound the drum during calls to prayer. Then there is the dome. Why spend so much money on such a construction when you can cover the prayer hall with cheaper roof systems?

The principle of form following function forced me to look at whether life is being lived according to blind tradition or according to rational actions suited to the present.

The critics of Mentega Terbang – which, by the way, refers to butterflies – clearly are unused to seeing a Muslim reading the Bible. What is wrong with that? I have several Bibles at home, several commentaries of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, the Taoist I’Ching and Teachings of the Buddha. I use the Bible to enlighten my students about the history of architecture as signified by the symbols and rituals related to the spaces and forms of the great cathedrals of Europe. I also use the Bible to supplement my own understanding of the stories concerning the prophets in the Quran.

Next, as a designer, I was taught to respect all heritage. This is called honouring the spirit of the place; form following function was honouring the spirit of the times. If a building is to be built in a place that had grown around a race or a culture or a faith, then the building needs to respect that context by considering its setbacks, street corridors, urban spaces, ornament design, material choice and even colour. The idea here is to “fit” the building within the cultural and historical setting.

Thus, architecture graduates usually do not get overly excited about images of crosses, idols standing tall and icons of animals. To us, these are the “sound and music” of time, culture, functions and the values of a people. Thus, it is normal to see an architecture graduate having to read the Bible, the Tao Te Ching or the Bhagavad Gita just to understand the rituals, symbols and stories of a faith or culture other than his or her own.

Thus, criticising a movie that is about an honest search for spiritual truth and how to live among the many faiths of this country should not be construed as an insult to any religion. Why should it be? Is spirituality a law of the land? Do we not have free will to believe what we want or are we forced under threat by society to the point that sharing knowledge, ideas and experiences of different faiths is an act of defiance and tampering?

And, by the way, I’m not surprised that social science professors are keeping quiet; I think perhaps they too have been subjected to the compartmentalisation of knowledge that our science and technology graduates experience.

What good is a university education when thinking is restricted by the lame excuse of “protecting tradition” without the value and earnest effort of subjecting tradition to a questioning and a reinterpretation? Perhaps an elective in the history of Renaissance art would open the eyes and prevent students from having closed minds.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.