This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 2, 2020 - November 8, 2020

MALAYSIA will be stepping up the promotion of its creative content industry as “one of the hard areas of economic growth”, Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah told participants at an online forum on Oct 26 to mark the country’s adoption of the United Nations International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development 2021.

He revealed that he and Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri had just co-chaired the National Creative Economy Council a fortnight ago and discussed funding issues for the creative industry and even having something like “a road [map] to the Oscars”.

Presumably, he was using the Oscars merely as a symbol of the government’s desire to support the creation of more great Malaysian content for a global audience. After all, insiders familiar with awards politics say winning an Oscar has more to do with [the potentially very expensive affair of] selling the movie well to Academy voters in Hollywood rather than making an outstanding movie or supporting the idealistic souls in the creative arts.

It is also in line with the renewed hope of Asian content and narrative garnering greater acceptance among a global audience, after South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite made history in February as the first non-English language film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Parasite was also the first South Korean film to receive the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.

Optimism aside, industry insiders say the win was decades in the making. Behind Parasite’s big win is 61-year-old Miky Lee Mie-kyung, vice-chair of Korean conglomerate CJ Group, who is seen as the “godmother” of South Korea’s film industry and credited with playing a crucial role in promoting the Hallyu (Korean cultural) wave. A regular consumer of South Korean exports may recognise the CJ brand of consumer goods as well as CJ E&M Co’s TV channels TVN, TVN Movies and OCN, and the annual Korean wave convention (KCON) that it has organised in Los Angeles and multiple locations across the globe since 2012. CJ’s bakery franchise Tous Les Jours shuttered its Malaysian outlets in 2017 and recently sold its 50% stake in home shopping venture CJ Wow Shop, to make it wholly-owned by Media Prima Bhd.

A granddaughter of Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chul (Miky is cousin to Samsung Electronics heir apparent Lee Jae-yong), Miky was an early investor in DreamWorks SKG (whose founders include Steven Spielberg) in 1995. The US$300 million deal reportedly gave CJ the film studio’s Asian distribution rights as well as access for her Korean filmmakers to study under DreamWorks.

In his opening address at the Creative Economy 2021 Forum held in early October in conjunction with Budget 2021, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz cited the success of South Korea’s film and music industry in boosting tourism as well as the country’s exports of consumer goods and services. He said players in the creative arts scene “should not see themselves in isolation” but position themselves to become “substantial and sustainable contributors” to the nation’s economy and high-growth sectors like science and innovation. After all, part of what makes Apple or Samsung phones a worldwide success is their design.

There’s certainly ample room to grow the industry’s contribution to Malaysia’s economic growth. As it is, the creative industry contributes around 2% of Malaysia GDP, makes up 0.2% of exports and employs about one million people, chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin told participants at the Creative Economy 2021 Forum.

Noting that the promotion of the creative industry and entrepreneurs was mentioned in the 11th Malaysia Plan (2016 to 2020), Saifuddin said efforts to leverage the country’s rich cultural heritage in promoting sustainable development would continue to feature in the 12th Malaysia Plan to be tabled in January 2021. “We’re committed to building a better ecosystem … the models can be borrowed from countries like South Korea, the ideas are there ... it is about working together and getting things done, putting everyone on the same platform.”

It remains to be seen if the creative economy will feature prominently in Budget 2021, which is set to be tabled in parliament this Friday (Nov 6). To help the industry amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the government allocated RM225 million for the arts, culture, entertainment and events industry under the RM35 billion Penjana (Short-term Economic Recovery Plan) announced on June 5. That includes RM100 million in soft loans and RM30 million in grants under MyCreative Ventures and RM10 million under the Cultural Economy Development Agency (Cendana).

In March, Singapore — which in 2002 introduced a Media 2021 blueprint to increase the sector’s GDP contribution and transform itself into a global media city — allocated another S$55 million in aid for the arts and culture sector in its supplementary budget to counter Covid-19.

In July, South Korea pledged KRW156.9 billion (US$131 million) to support its arts sector, including KRW23.2 billion in grants for financially strapped artists and KRW31.9 billion in wage support for people in the performing arts such as theatre, musicals and classical concerts. South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism received KRW6.48 trillion (US$4.9 billion) in Budget 2019, with KRW1.1 trillion to be invested in the virtual reality content sector and KRW40 billion on a new VR content exhibition space in Seoul. Some KRW113 billion was allocated to content creators while KRW32.3 billion was earmarked to support local filmmakers, cartoonists and fashion designers looking to expand overseas, according to Korean news reports.

According to the Hyundai Research Institute (HRI), the annual economic impact from South Korean popular global idol group BTS alone was about US$5.6 billion as at June 2020 and is set to reach KRW56 trillion (US$49.8 billion) over 10 years from 2014 to 2023. BTS alone had helped sell over US$9 billion worth of clothing, cosmetics and food currently, says HRI, which in 2018 estimated that the boy band contributed some US$1.1 billion or 1.7% of total Korean consumer goods exports in 2017. Prior to the pandemic, local news reports had indicated around 1% boost each to the GDP for the cities of Seoul and Busan from just one BTS concert, owing to its army of global fans that are kept constantly engaged by a team of online professionals in different time zones.

To be sure, the creative industries have not only become an increasingly important contributor to GDP growth but have proved to be transformative in terms of generating income, jobs and exports, United Nations resident coordinator Stefan Priesner said at the online forum, noting the tangible benefits of integrating the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals related to the cultural and creative industries in national development plans and budgets.

CJ Entertainment is in charge of overseas sales and the marketing of The Garden of The Evening Mists, touted as Malaysia’s most well-funded film to date (said to be RM20 million), jointly produced by Astro Shaw and HBO Asia. Asked about Malaysia’s chances of securing an Oscar nomination with The Garden of The Evening Mists, Astro Malaysia Bhd group CEO Henry Tan would only say what is important is that the group continues to strive for excellence in content production. The movie received nine nominations (including for best film, best director and best screenplay, and best actress for Malaysian actress Angelica Lee) at the 56th Golden Horse Film Festival and won the award for Best Makeup and Costume Design.

Tan noted, though, that Taiwanese-American Oscar-winning film director and screenwriter Ang Lee said he “hopes to see more films like this” after watching the film in Taipei.

“Both the book and the film are high-quality works with a strong positive message. I do believe both the book and film will stand the test of time and leave a mark on both Malaysian literature and Malaysian cinema,” says Taiwanese Tom Lin Shu-Yu, who directed the film based on a screenplay by British screenwriter Richard Smith, adapted from Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng’s book.

Twan Eng reckons that the film is already a landmark for Malaysia “just based on the scale of the production alone”. “The cast and crew are highly talented and diverse, coming from all regions of the world. The production values are world-class. The film looks lush and gorgeous. It focuses on a turbulent period of our history, and Tom Lin has created a sensitive, nuanced, restrained film,” he tells The Edge.

Why should policymakers pay attention to the rise in the Asian narrative on the global stage and how can they help people in the creative arts?

“Artists need time to master their craft, and it’s important that policymakers protect the seedlings of creativity from global capitalism and consumerism. For example, Korea has policies protecting Korean Cinema by ordering that movie theatres play at least 50% local films in their theatres. If it was all up to the theatres, they would only play what sells most, but culturally and artistically, it may become hard for that nation to improve,” Lin tells The Edge, noting that education is also key in ensuring that youths are on the same page in terms of the value that the creative arts bring to the nation and society.

 “If we are to catch the attention of the West, we will need support from the entire country, and at the same time, the country itself needs to promote all the goods — whether it’s literature, cinema, food, music — that are local to the international scene. Like Parasite again, it’s getting the attention it has because it’s a good film, but also, because of how Koreans have risen their image in the hearts of minds of the West, and this takes an entire nation to achieve,” adds Lin.

While one can argue that Parasite “may not be Boon Joon Ho’s strongest film”, Lin notes that “it has gotten him furthest into the mainstream in the west”.

“If Parasite was made 10 to 15 years ago, it might not reach where it is now… this wouldn’t have been possible if not for the whole K-Pop culture getting into the West first,” Lin says.

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