Stereotypes, Myths, Biases, and final thoughts

Some of the stereotypes about Malayasians are that they are lazy; manipulative; have inferiority complex; steal (from people and cultural ideas from Indonesia); ultra religious; hate westerners; inhospitable; wear bright, colorful clothes; every long-term visitor is expected to convert to Islam; men chauvinistic, have mistresses; arrogant; corrupt, Muslim terrorist; racist (violence to Chinese in the past). As well as some of the same stereotypes of the Chinese like being good at math, knowning kungfu, etc.
Some Malayasian myths are Bajang: the spirit of a stillborn child in the form of a civet cat (musang). Hantu kopek: a female ghost with large bosoms who lures men who cheat on their wives. Jembalang: a demon or evil spirit that usually brings disease Puaka: nature spirit of a place which are typically said to reside in abandoned buildings. The Malay word for ghost is hantu.

Here are some specific to Penang: Kitchen God or Tsao Chun. Considered one of Penang’s real local Folklores, the Kitchen God story goes like this: Tsao Chun or Chow Kong, was once a mortal man, married to a virtuous lady. But he left his wife for a young girl he fell in love with. And bad luck followed him. And the Kitchen God became penniless and blind, the young girl left him and he has to resort to begging. He happened to beg for food in his former wife house. Being blind he did not recognize her. Being a virtuous person, she show mercy on him and invited him in. She cooked him a fabulous meal and tended to him lovingly. As she was kind to him, Tsao Chun related to her his story and as he began to cry.

Another good Penang myth is called Goddess Parvati. Goddess Parvati Vel is about a folklore of the evil demons who had such a big ego that he did not want to surrender to Lord Muruga.He though he could hide from Lord Muruga in this Goddess Parvati Vel. When he took the form of a mango tree but Lord Muruga's spear split the tree. One part he turned to a peacock as His vehicle. The other he turned to a cock as his flag or banner. The Vel (sacred spear) which Goddess Parvati gave to Lord Muruga is the most powerful weapon in his armory. Lord Muruga fought for ten days and destroyed the evil Soorapadman and his brothers. The above was one of many told to me by different locals as I probe for more understanding of the Indian folklores. It was great to find out more about the many incarnation and roles Parvati and Lord Shiva played in each. Parvati is one of the major aspects of Devi, the universal goddess folklore. She appears as Lord Shiva's consort, considered in this form to be a mountain goddess.

From what I have read most of the media bias of Malaysia, in general, comes from Indonesia. However, the most media bias that I saw was during the most recent election. So much so that some experts at University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus had to make sure that the election was covered fairly and diverse views. They found that both print and news wire (radio) did not present well balanced or fair news, but that online news and Mandarin language print newspapers did.

My thoughts on this project are of amazement. As I did my research I found a lot of information about a country that I had no real idea about. It is interesting how similar this country is to the United States. Actually, on my salary I could live in Penang and pay the same amount of rent that I currently pay. Some of the stereotypes seemed somewhat misinformed. But it seems there is a lot of internal struggle between the Indonesians and the Malaysians in general. I enjoyed the stories and myths of Penang as they were very fun to read. After doing the research I would actually like to visit Penang, Malaysia as a tourist. There are a lot of fun things that I would love to do there, especially go to the theme park Escape! In the future if I didn’t know much about a country I would actually research and see what it has to offer. There is a chance that I maybe missing out on a dream vacation because I don’t know about what the world has to offer.