Issue 18 // Matty Healy vs Malaysia

'It's giving White saviour complex'

Rice Privilege is an offshoot of my main music/culture-focused blog deadset.press where I discuss Asian-centric social and cultural issues with my long-time confidant and fellow Kpop obsessive Jason Nam. A recent event in the indie music headlines was a perfect storm of all our main interests and so we just had to discuss the topic of LGBT rights in Malaysia. I reached out to Carmen Rose, a drag queen from Kuala Lumpur, and she was kind enough to agree to a conversation around these topics. Read a summary below and catch the podcast episode on Spotify, or wherever you get your poddys from.  

This episode of Rice Privilege revolves around an incident involving indie-pop darlings The 1975 at the Good Vibes music festival in Malaysia. Lead singer Matty Healy made anti-government remarks and kissed his bassist on stage, resulting in their set being cut short and ultimately the cancellation of the festival. This incident sparked a national and international conversation about LGBT rights in Malaysia. As of this week, a class action lawsuit is being filed against the band to the tune of 3 million GBP.

Ultimately, the debt owed by The 1975 is much more than just financial.

After interviews with the BBC and ABC (Aus), we connected with drag performer Carmen Rose to continue the conversation about her experiences as a drag queen in Malaysia and discuss how incidents like this affect the local queer community. 

For us in the West/Eurocentric environment, the idea of police raids on nightclubs and parties by targeting LGBTQ individuals seems like a story from the past. However it is a harsh reality for people like Carmen and her friends in Malaysia. It was just last Halloween when an event organised by her and her associates called Shagrilla was shut down with trumped up charges on drugs as well as moral indecency. While it's true that Malaysia has a complex dual legal system system, with Sharia law applying to Muslims and secular law for non-Muslims, the religious police and largely conservative society do not look kindly on drag or queer-friendly events. 

Because of this religious pressure and its complex sociopolitical implications, the Matty Healy incident has sparked intense controversy in Malaysia, especially with the upcoming state elections. Local queer organisations have expressed indignation, claiming that Matty has undone years of work on progress for LGBTQ+ rights. With Western media framing this incident as positive for human rights, and Matty still cracking Malaysia jokes at Lollapalooza last weekend, it seems that most have missed the point entirely. 

Carmen calls it as it is - an ignorant moment displaying ‘white saviour complex’ at its worst. Its reminiscent of too-recent colonialist history in a country such as Malaysia. (Keep in mind, as Carmen also points out, that the strict views on homosexuality were actually inherited from British colonial rule, before being further entrenched into the wider Islamic Sharia Law in place). 

"Whatever works in the West does not necessarily work in the global South. You also have to understand cultural context, and how complex it is. To say that Matty Healy did something good for us is very patronising and tone deaf because you're not listening to what the local queer people have to say, what it means to them and the damage that he has caused"

- Carmen Rose on Matty Healy

While Matty Healy is known for his onstage and offstage antics, and yes he does have a fairly credible record on supporting LGBTQ rights globally, this approach is fundamentally non-translatable everywhere he goes. Not only have the queer community been put back years by his flippant remarks, but With the Malaysian government clamping down on the festival as a whole, The 1975 have left a trail of destruction in their wake affecting local talent, creatives, fans and anyone involved in the music industry trying to foster a thriving scene. This added scrutiny and political pressure will no doubt linger for years to come.

Moving forward, a story like this reminds us how important it is for outsiders to educate themselves on the local context before taking action in solidarity with marginalised groups. The least Matty Healy could do was reach out to Malaysian advocacy groups before engaging in his drunken rockstar tactics, or hell, even after the fact. But given Matty's track record, here's guessing that that probably won't be the case.

The 1975 probably won't pay up in their lawsuit, and the white saviour complex that Southeast Asia is all too familiar with will always persist (just look at any amount of comments under Western social media posts about this story). The social debt will affect the creative industry in the long-term as well as ordinary punters like Carmen Rose and her group of merrymakers.

However, it's thanks to people like Carmen, that there will always be a way to dance, party and move forward on the ground, regardless of what outsiders make of their country, their scene, and what is ultimately their movement.

Listen to the full interview with Carmen Rose below.