{Spoilers Ahead!}
“Bring tissues!” the director of Abang Adik (Jin Ong) winkingly forewarned in a promotional interview for the film.
The throwaway succinctness of this remark, however, belies the full extent of the film’s artistic imperative. First, there are no two ways about its directorial intent: the audience is expected, given full permission and encouraged to cry their heart out. Second, since emotional engagement with the film is taken for granted, and the presence of tragedy within the story is already ‘spoiled’ at the outset, it signals that there is more to the film than being a tearjerker for its own sake. Crying may be instrumental to a proper appreciation of the film, but it is not its end goal.
A Tale of Abang and Adik: Interwoven Lives in an Isolating World
Abang Adik is centered on the fate and (mis)fortunes of the film’s eponymous ‘brothers’. Abang (Wu Kang-ren) and Adik (Jack Tan) are siblings not by consanguinity but circumstance. As undocumented Malaysia-born persons living on the margins, their found familial bond is forged from a shared sense of otherness and a desperate bid at normality. Abang tries his best to be the parental figure Adik seeks and needs, and Adik becomes the object of protection and affection that gives meaning to Abang’s life. Adik rebels— against the law, his socioeconomic condition and all forms of help; while Abang hopes— against Adik’s self-destruction and his own simple, self-sustained optimism.
We see Abang brandishing a wooden plank to shield Adik from would-be attackers (victims of Adik’s unlawful resort to earning quick money). Adik instinctively reaching out to embrace Abang after Abang suffers from a romantic misfortune. Abang and Adik cracking boiled eggs open with each other’s forehead as a wordless form of brotherly code. And finally, Abang and Adik giving in to their best and worst impulses in the catastrophic fallout set in motion by a split-second mistake at the film’s climax. These story beats are no doubt designed to emotionally provoke, and their efficacy is evident from the critical and audience acclaim the film has received.
Abang Adik’s Emotional Enigma
I have initially found it puzzling that so much of the fanfare surrounding the film is focused on just how devastating the viewing experience is. What might be the reason behind Abang Adik’s strong emotional resonance with the Malaysian audience?
Certainly, the film’s commentary on the unjust marginalization of stateless persons provides a sobering reminder of the harsh mundanity of their defenseless, disenfranchised lives. The familiar distinctiveness of a Malaysian setting (geographical, cultural and linguistic) enhances the film’s relatability. The actors are also fully convincing in their delivery of moving, naturalistic performances. And crucially, pulling all these elements together is a steady directorial hand that is prescient in its anticipation of the kinds of audience reaction that particular cinematic techniques will precipitate.
But I suspect that there is a deeper reason why the emotional reaction towards the film has become its most defining feature, and the answer might be this: Abang Adik’s blurring of the line between fiction and documentary meaningfully engages with what is known as ‘the paradox of fictional emotions’.
Briefly, the paradox raises the question of whether the emotional responses produced towards fictional characters can ever be genuine. In other words, if we know that these particular characters do not in fact exist, and these events and storylines did not in fact happen, then why do we consider the emotions that we feel towards them (not the lives they represent) to be real?
Three main claims are commonly raised in relation to this paradox:
- we often have emotional responses to fictional characters that seem genuine;
- we do not actually believe that these fictional characters/ events exist/ happen; and
- emotions are only genuine and rational if we believe the situation giving rise to them is real.
These three claims cannot simultaneously be true, thus giving rise to the paradox.
Philosophers have responded to these claims in a variety of ways:
- In relation to (a), some argue that while it is natural and fitting for us to have these emotional responses, these responses are nevertheless incoherent (they make no sense), incorrect (they are wrong or mistaken since the target object of the emotion does not actually exist), or are simply a make-believe (they are “quasi” emotions, i.e. they are not emotions in the full and proper sense).
- In relation to (b), it has been argued that we may believe those emotions to be genuine because our perceptual capacities visually perceive fictional objects to be real; though this view has been rejected on the basis that the very knowledge that we are encountering a fictional object will already make us perceive it differently from a real-life object.
- On the other hand, (c) has been negated either on the ground that emotions do not involve ‘thinking’ and thus the status of its target object does not matter; or that fictional emotions can indeed be genuine, to the extent that they are comparable to simulated emotions that arise when we create imaginary counterfactuals whilst engaging in practical reasoning to solve real-life problems.
My take on Abang Adik is this. We find the emotional aspect of Abang Adik compelling and worthy of repeated highlight because it presents to us a puzzle: the fact that Abang Adik’s world of fiction closely mirrors what happens in real life puts the audience in an emotional double-bind where the paradox is concerned. That is, a conclusion that fictional emotions are genuine puts us in an equally morally uncomfortable position as the conclusion that fictional emotions are not real.
A quick survey of the audience reaction towards Abang Adik (see images below) reveals that the audience prides itself in having felt empathy and sympathy for Abang and Adik’s predicament, possibly because this signifies that we possess morally right– and, dare I say, righteous– convictions. If we feel Adik’s helpless anguish when he meets Abang for the last time before Abang is executed, it must mean that we are good people with the ability to understand the plight of those more unfortunate than us! Such a moral high ground may not seem as earned, say, when we feel Rose’s grief as she reluctantly lets go of Jack in order to be rescued at the end of Titanic.
If Fictional Emotions were Real
If fictional emotions were genuine, and if attributing full genuine status to fictional emotions meant equating emotions towards fictional characters with emotions towards real-life people, then we might find ourselves confronted with some thorny ethical dilemmas.
First, would such an equation inadvertently diminish the moral status of these real-life people? Is it not distasteful, and rather absurd, to say that the empathy we feel for deaf-mute Abang’s augmented sense of isolation is as ‘real’ as that for a real-life disabled, stateless person?
Second, since the characters of Abang and Adik clearly do not exist in reality and thus nothing can actually be done for their characters, will we end up settling for a ‘feel-good’ moral complacency that stops short of converting these feelings into real action?
Take, for example, Adik’s patent anger and discomfort at having to reach out to his estranged father in order to have the latter vouch for Adik’s Malaysia-born status– an act essential to Adik’s ability to obtain an identity card. We might feel deeply indignant that Adik is being forced to ask for help from a father who has chosen to abandon him at a young age, just so that Adik would be able to create a future for himself. We might nevertheless conclude (quite rightly) that there is nothing to be done for Adik’s character since Adik is not a real person. Yet, since empathy is not that easily transferred from a fictional character to a real person, we might also end up doing nothing to help real-life people encountering the same problem.
Perhaps a survey can be conducted to find out how many of the film’s audience who take these feelings very seriously manage to replicate them for Adik’s real-life counterpart, and then do something about it.
“Go find your father and get your IC.” – Abang
Abang Adik, 2023
“I don’t have a father. All I have is you.” – Adik
If Fictional Emotions were Not Real
If fictional emotions turned out to be not real, and thus less is ‘at stake’ so to speak, we are confronted with a slightly different set of dilemmas. Most notably, this awareness may produce an aesthetic distance that leads us to disproportionately empathize and sympathize with morally questionable characters.
For instance, the ‘safety’ provided by the ‘not real’ nature of our emotions towards Adik makes it easier for us to see him as a character deserving of our pity and compassion, even if we have seen him engaging in exploitative behavior (towards illegal migrants even more helpless than himself) and violent actions (towards the selfless social worker, Jia En (Serene Lim)). Adik’s status as one of the film’s titular protagonists makes us want to root for him, at times to the detriment of the other supporting characters. But in the real world, we might not find it so convenient to overlook his transgressions even if we do understand his misguided motivations, and thus we might be sterner in determining the limit of the ‘emotional just deserts’ that Adik should receive.
Additionally, when the significance of fictional emotions is minimized or deemed inconsequential, we might also be more willing to revel in what Samuel Johnson terms “the delight of tragedy”. Put differently, we might find it more palatable to “fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment” and thus succumb to a voyeurism of suffering when we are aware of the fictionality of a situation. Just like virtue-signaling celebrities who partake in feel-good philanthropic tourism, when we ‘indulge’ ourselves in the misery experienced by Abang and Adik during the movie’s 115-minute runtime and thereafter give ourselves a pat in the back, we are effectively taking a vicarious tour of the misfortunes of the real-life people Abang and Adik are meant to represent. In short, our empathy is rendered recreational.
I always wonder why I was born here. I don’t have a home. I don’t even have parents. I can only watch from afar. – Abang
Abang Adik, 2023
Notice that the existence of the paradox does not preclude the ability to enjoy and appreciate fiction. The status of fictional emotions as genuine or otherwise might predispose us to adopt a certain mindset towards the moral insights and moral actions which can be generated from those feelings, but it does not by itself give rise to any normative implications. The paradox is useful, not because it provides prescriptions about what we must do with these fictional feelings, but because it prods us to think carefully about what these fictional feelings can(not) do.
Abang Adik Review: Concluding Thoughts
Herein lies the genius of Abang Adik: the film intrigues, not just because it inspires by weaving the socio-political with the personal in bold and creative ways, but more importantly because it discombobulates. In consciously enlisting the audience’s emotional repertoire to convey its core message about human connection and love, the film inevitably ropes us into a conversation about the relationship between fiction, emotions and real life.
We leave the cinema weighed down by the bleakness of the film’s subject matter, secretly relieved that we can take an emotional break and ‘come back to’ our actual lives; yet we cannot help but be discomfited by the realization that what we have just felt– whether or not we think it to be genuine– would very much be real somewhere, and to someone, beyond the cinematic walls.