‘No hugging please, we are Muslims’: Akademi Fantasia, Malay television audiences and the negotiation of global popular cultural forms

Abstract

This paper analyses the audience reception of the Malaysian reality television programme Akademi Fantasia (AF), which first aired in 2003 and completed its ninth season in 2011. AF has been an influential pioneer in the national television industry, inaugurating the trend of local reality shows and weathering intense competition from similar shows to remain at the top of the ratings chart over the last decade. Based on the Mexican talent search show, La Academia, Malaysia's AF is a unique hybrid blend of an Idol-style talent contest and Big Brother observational spectacle. The article draws on primary audience research to investigate the ways in which Malay audiences interpret the potentially incommensurable cultural meanings generated within the context of a localised version of a global television format. Chua's concept of ‘identification and distancing’ is employed as a framework to analyse the complex ways in which perceived Malay ‘cultural norms’ assume primacy as interpretative lenses for audience evaluations of the show and measures of its local difference from similar global cultural products. The research also reveals how these cultural norms are themselves being negotiated by the audience as part of the everyday experience of inhabiting coexisting local and global popular cultural spaces. The analysis focuses on audience understandings and pleasure in the programme in relation to fashion and taste; the behaviour of the official judges; voyeurism and conflict in ‘backstage’ coverage; and emotional intimacy onstage in the public performance component of the programme.

Keywords:

• reality TV
• audience reception
• Malaysia
• globalisation
• popular culture

Notes

1. Popstars, which aired in 2000 on NTV7 channel, could be considered as the first locally produced reality show in Malaysia, but it was not able to generate much interest and was discontinued after the first season.

2. La Academia is one of the most-watched reality series on TV Azteca, the second largest broadcaster in Mexico (Samat, 2003).

3. AF is specifically targeted at a Malay audience (in-depth interview with AF season one director Khairul Mizan Shagol) and rarely includes contestants from other ethnic groups. There are other Malaysian reality talent contests programmes especially targeted to Chinese and Indian viewers – Astro has produced Astro Talent Quest for Chinese viewers and Vaanavil Paadhaltiran Pott for Indian viewers (Lee, 2005).

4. RTM censorship rules for dress code is divided according to genders, which consist of nine rules for female celebrities and eight guidelines for male celebrities. Basically, both genders cannot dress in thin and see-through cloth, and the dress should not expose wide area of the body. For example, female celebrities cannot wear low cut and bare-back tops, and the male celebrities cannot wear short pants or singlet.