It was always burning!

Have I Got Something To Tell You
Author: Malachi Edwin Vethamani

Listen
Do you want to know a secret?
Do you promise not to tell?
Whoa, oh, oh
Closer
Let me whisper in your ear
Say the words you long to hear
I'm in love with you
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh ooh…

Not too long ago, that was how it used to be. Now it is 'on your face'. Personal liberty, self-expression, and space availability have led to this. We didn't start the fire; it was always burning… just that it has found mainstream.

Take the movies South Pacific and Ben Hur, which were made around the late 1950s. Movie connoisseurs would agree that those films had many not-so-subtle references to homoerotism. Nobody raised a red flag then, even though the American Motion Pictures Production Code (Hays Code) was quite clear about its guidelines regarding romance, gay issues, exposure of flesh and cleavage. The filmmakers tried to make South Pacific a feel-good war movie. Aside from the lush jungles, sunsets and beaches, it showed half-naked happy sailors dancing away into the evening. Ben Hur was marketed as a religious epic; again, these unspoken subtexts were buried in the story. The classic scene which did not raise an eyebrow then (but it does now) was when Ben-Hur and Messala drank wine from their chalices in an interlocked arm position, staring into each other's eyes.

Both created little fanfare, then. … but it was always burning.

Stories like these were also whispered in the hush in a profoundly conservative society like ours. Things were left to be heard and acted on the sly. Instead, people wore blinkers or buried their heads in the sand rather than accepted reality.

Malachi Edwin Vethamani's 'Have I Got Something To Tell You' is a collection of stories that may be close to our hearts. It reminds us of the extraordinary journey that we, the citizens of Malaysia, experience in our daily lives. Challenges with race, religion, governmental policies, societal discrimination, and adolescent challenges are all too familiar.

South Pacific

Ben Hur

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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