"All the world's a stage," opined Jacques in As you like it : "And all the men and women merely players" (Act II: Scene VII). The idea that the world's a stage was quite common during Elizabethan times and could be found in several other Shakespearean plays. Indeed, the idea preceded Shakespeare — it can be traced back to the Greeks and the Romans and it still survives in the modern world.

Feudalistic Malaysia is peculiarly suited for the transplant and growth of the idea. Malaysians love pomp and pageantry and they certainly relish the opportunity to be players on any stage.

Witness, for instance, the many celebrations held for all kinds of purposes, from the lion dance to the tea ceremony for the Emperor, from the coronation of the King to the staged welcome for the returning Caliph (read: Mahathir). At all levels, Malaysians are apt to encounter would-be actors who imagine themselves as heroes and whose language reflects the violence and blood and gore of medieval times.

Imagine, for example, what any modern official ought to say when he's elected — sorry, appointed — to the post of menteri besar. His speech might include the customary thanks to those who appointed him, followed by pledges to serve the people honestly and to the best of his ability.

But then, such a speech lacks bite, lacks the heroism and grandeur normally attributed to medieval knights. So, instead of saying the usual things expected of him, things that his counterparts in other countries might utter, this mentri besar thundered that he would shed blood if necessary to protect race, country, and religion. Whose blood to be shed and what race, whose country and which religion needed protection was, of course, left unspecified. No matter: it was enough to play the hero for a day — Who cares if one looks like a clown for the rest of the year?

Better than Hollywood

Sandiwara . The word suggests both legitimate drama and drama of a less savoury kind. Both, however, are built upon events. Yet events are dramatic only when perceived by the beholder. And like beauty the quality of the events — that which differentiates between legitimate and unsavory drama — lies very much in the eyes of that beholder.

And there's the rub. How to judge, for example, whether a politician's tears were real when he told his party that he was going to resign? If the tears were "real" wouldn't that merely mean he was a good actor?

Similarly, when a fat woman leaped up to say "why? why?" how could we tell whether her action was induced by her concern for the crying actor or by a fear that, without her protector, she might be investigated for some shady financial dealings?

Or, on a less incriminating note, how could we be sure that her leap was not provoked by something more mundane, such as her chair collapsing under her weight? We've seen how movie actors cry, how Jackie Chan jumps up to shriek something inane, and it is only because we're in a theatre and thus have the foreknowledge that we're watching a movie that we're assured it is only sandiwara (play-acting).

Some readers might say that politicians are not movie actors. They're certainly not: they're better than even Hollywood actors.

No Hollywood actor can solemnly convince an entire community — that's millions and millions of people — that he would accept the Suqiu Appeals when his intention is to do precisely the opposite.

No Hollywood actor can convince entire communities that they're living in a democracy when they've no say in how the country is run, when as non-bumiputra they're condemned to eternal pendatang (immigrant) status.

And no Hollywood actor has the finesse, the verve and perhaps the nerve of the Umno leader to say that, after two decades of kicking his salivating sycophants around, he is unable to reject their "request" to stay around for another 16 months.

The whole episode was so brazenly enacted that it had the appearance of being truthful, so that the entire nation (or almost) started bawling like an audience at a Bollywood tear-jerker.

Elements of drama

In short, a first-class mimetic representation of a great leader who, like George Washington, was only too willing to resign from his lofty post, albeit after two decades or so at the helm, was achieved. People, even well-educated ones, instantly forgot the thousands of times when he and his party's verbal representations were unable to correspond with the extratextual references. The more recent verbal-reality mismatches involve not only the Suqiu swindle, but also dramatic announcements such as "Chinese could become Prime Minister," and a "meritocractic" university admission system that was anything but meritocractic.

As the writer Kim Quek notes

, Dr Mahathir Mohamad's dramatic presentation at the Umno assembly and in front of national television was powerful partly because of the "shock" element. As every drama enthusiast knows, astonishment is one of the key elements of dramatic art and this was achieved by, again as Kim Quek explains, keeping his impending announcement from even his wife and children.

The sudden announcement was thus poised to prepare for the second element, that companion of astonishment, which is suspense. The first incident must astonish so that people would want to know about the second incident, which came a day later when he announced his distant resignation date. The BN-controlled media was able to play up the Great-Man-No-Longer-With-Us tragedy, with an eye, of course, to the coming general election.

Aristotle once defined plot in drama as "the imitation of the Action." Action probably means some activities or movements in a general direction. It is something, some general pattern, that we've known before in our minds and thus we are able recognise it as soon as it is presented. Some people might think that such recognition would dilute the suspense, but this is not so.

For example, we know that the movie hero who was first beaten up or otherwise humiliated would ultimately triumph and give the bad guys their deserved punishment. This was the case in the movie Shane , in The fastest gun alive , and in nearly all kungfu movies. Knowing the general flow of events neither dilutes the suspense nor makes the drama less exciting or powerful. What's important is that each discrete event must be interesting.

In the case of the Great-Man-No-Longer-With-Us drama, the mass media has offered the public a general pattern that almost anyone can recognise: It is the same pattern used by movie makers when they tell stories of how some people cope with the sudden loss of leader, a husband, or a sifu (martial arts master). Since for most people it's easier to remember the good than the bad — a psychological defence — they're likely to forget, at least momentarily, about the tyranny they live under, such as the leader's jailing and torturing of political opponents, the husband's daily wife-battering exercises, or the sadistic beatings by the kungfu master.

Imitative arts

Back to Mahathir, the drama becomes even more poignant as people tend to identify an old long-reigning leader with the head of their family unit: The loss of his leadership is thus, consciously or unconsciously, equated with the loss of a father.

The stage is perhaps the most powerful of what is known as the imitative arts, for it involves both sight and sound with the greatest verisimilitude. A thoughtful production can often blur the lines between fact and fancy, between truth and illusion. It is not surprising that in The Republic Plato took a very dim view of all imitative arts and considered them "thrice removed from the truth" (Book X).

Still, as noted earlier, and as the word sandiwara indicates, there are legitimate plays as well as less savoury ones. One thing that worried Plato was the tendency of people to become what they imitate. It was largely for that reason that Jane Austen's heroine Fanny Price was so adamant against the holding of the play Lovers' vows at Mansfield ( Mansfield Park , Chapters XIV and XV).

Yet there are plays that teach us about human ambitions (e.g. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar ), about society (e.g. Ibsen's A doll's house ), and most important, that ask questions about ourselves (e.g. Sophocles' Oedipus the King ). And there are real-life yet noble sandiwara such as Winston Churchill's "fight in the beaches" speech, not to mention the magnificent "I have a dream" proclamation by Dr Martin Luther King Jr which will continue to inspire future generations.

In other words, not all sandiwara are self-serving, though there are admittedly audiences for such as well. In the end, all sandiwara , whether legitimate or not, depend on the audience for their success. The people who created the sandiwara do so because they recognise the feudal society that exists, and the insatiable appetite of the average, bored, Malaysian for the dramatic or melodramatic.

In a land where freedom of speech is absent, where freedom of the press is a joke, Bollywood-type movies are excuses for daydreaming, for shedding that tear for those who oppress us, so that we would not need to cry for ourselves.

L CHUAH is a self-proclaimed literature hog who is interested in applying a multi-disciplinary approach to world affairs.