There is a growing discomfort in Malaysia whenever the arts begin to touch what is deemed “offensive.” A scene is clipped, a video goes viral, and suddenly the conversation is no longer about meaning, but morality. Institutions apologise. Works are disqualified. And somewhere in the middle of all this, we lose sight of what creative work is actually supposed to do.
Let me say this plainly as an arts practitioner: the arts are a mirror of society.
And sometimes, what we see in that mirror is uncomfortable.
Recently, a Universiti Malaya theatre performance came under scrutiny for a scene involving a man and woman in an intimate staging moment. The reaction was swift, predictable, and familiar. Words like “indecent” and “inappropriate” surfaced almost immediately.
But here is the question we should be asking: If a scene like that exists in a play, what is it serving?
Because no serious theatre-maker stages intimacy for its own sake. Whether it is romantic tension, emotional collapse, comedy, or critique, every physical moment in performance carries intention. Even silence is deliberate. Even discomfort is constructed.
If a scene unsettles us, perhaps it is doing its job—not to provoke for shock value, but to open a space for reflection.
The arts are not meant to be comfortable
I remember attending a theatre festival in Kuala Lumpur where a play centred on a fictional “rapist forum” was staged. The content was confronting, even disturbing to some audience members. There were complaints. But the organisers stood firm. The reasoning was simple: the arts should provoke dialogue, not comfort silence.
And that is a principle worth holding on to.
If something unsettles us, the response should not be immediate erasure. It should be conversation. Debate. Critique. Write about it. Challenge it. But do not shut it down simply because it makes us uncomfortable.
The arts that do not disturb anything are often the arts that have stopped saying anything meaningful.
I also recall staging a play a few years ago in Kuala Lumpur. In one scene, a male character speaks crudely about a woman’s body, describing her physicality in a way that some audience members later found offensive. Letters were sent to my collaborators describing it as disturbing, unnecessary, even traumatising.
I was fortunate to have my creative partners stand by the work. Because that moment was never meant to glorify the character’s words. It was meant to expose them, to reveal how flawed his gaze was, and how deeply ingrained it had become. The story tracks his eventual realisation that he had reduced women to objects, until life forced him to unlearn it.
When we restaged the work in Penang, a few audience members walked out during that scene. And yes, that is their right.
But what they missed was the transformation that followed—the very point of the work itself.
This is the risk the arts always carry: audiences may leave before the meaning fully unfolds.
That is why context matters. That is why framing matters. And that is why knee-jerk censorship is such a dangerous response to artistic work. It replaces interrogation with assumption, and dialogue with dismissal.
Censorship reduces the arts to silence
Critique is essential in the arts. But censorship is not critique.
We cannot demand meaningful creative work while also demanding that it never makes us uncomfortable.
Because discomfort is often where reflection begins.
So when we ask what is “offensive” in the arts, perhaps the better question is not whether it offends us, but whether it means something.
If it does, then the answer is not silence.
It is engagement.
And if we lose that space for engagement, then the arts are no longer a mirror of society.
They become something far less honest: a decoration of it.
About the writer:
Tau Foo Fah is a creature of impulse and odd rituals who claims her best writing happens in her car—where profound ideas and questionable decisions collide. Equal parts observer and instigator, her work blends sharp wit with truths that linger longer than they should. Offstage, she collects stories, eavesdrops with intent, and turns everyday absurdities into something dangerously close to art.
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