I often hear complaints from peers that go like this: “I never asked to be born!” They point fingers at others for the difficulties they experience in the world. In fact, Generation Z are predicted to face “doomsday.” Future scenarios include a burning Earth due to climate change as well as inflation leading to a housing crisis. No wonder they feel like blaming older generations for the hardships they are facing.
Another reason is how each character seems bound by the “regime”. Thaiddhi’s program note highlights how S-Express 2024: Myanmar amplifies the voices of youths in Myanmar regarding the current situation: the politically unstable conditions since the military seizes power, impacting every root of their lives.
S-Express 2024: Myanmar programmed four short films showing the perspective of Myanmar’s youth from various backgrounds. Each film presents an initiative to break free from their current status quo and achieve the freedom they have long desired.
Oppressed by the Older Regime
Thirty (2024, dir. Ei Mon Kyaw) tells the story of a lady living with her family. Her expressions are stiff, and she barely smiles whenever the camera focuses on her. Every night, she has to share a room with her mother. While minding her own business on her laptop, her sibling interrupts her, asking for help with family matters. We can feel her frustration through the screen when she tells her sibling she wants to move out. Soon, her mother overheard the plans and seemed reluctant to let her daughter continue with her plan.
The film’s opening shows the lady reminiscing the memories she had with her father; possibly, the father’s absence might be why the mother refused to let her only daughter go. But they both are adults; she has the right to choose how she should continue with her own life. One of them is to move out and get her own place; when she can finally achieve it, it is as if she can breathe freely, inhale her cigarettes deeply, and let out the smoke that carried her years of being restrained by the family.
She invited her friends to come to her new place to celebrate her new beginnings. When the camera slowly pans to her face, it shows that she still has the same expression at the start, perhaps due to the guilt lingering after she finds peace in her mind. Maybe it is the unwritten Asian Culture that is ingrained into one’s mind that our parents are still our responsibility. When the scene finally cuts to black, it reminds me that her desire for freedom is still much stronger no matter what she feels.
Grandpa (2023, dir. Mg Moore Phyu), the third film in the S-Express 2024: Myanmar, actually parallels the first film, comparing the different socio-economic backgrounds and ultimately showing how the main characters have different actions to pursue their end goal. Set in a rural area, a lady living with her grandfather, a conversation to move out, came up. Her approach is more or less a gamble in trying to live in new ways in China; it is riskier, and God knows what she would end up as.
As expected, the grandfather would not let her go like the cow he owns, which everyone has been convincing him to sell to use as canned beef. Later at night, he was torn to see that his granddaughter had been going so far as to exploit herself to make a living. From witnessing her doing the extreme, the grandfather realized that keeping her around does not mean her prosperity is guaranteed. It was more like restraining her from the things she could have achieved, the freedom she longs for.
I find a similarity between these two short films: a resistance against what is outdated. If we look into the past, transitions of military governments have occurred multiple times in Myanmar’s history. It is like a growing plague, and the youth inevitably grow tired and choose to rebel, opting for their path to freedom. In Thirty and Grandpa, the other two characters that are mainly focused on are the mother and the grandfather, in which both are also victims of the oppressive regime. Facing poverty and uncertainty as well, and we can see that their reactions to resisting are somehow different, perhaps literally, “holding on” their own daughter and granddaughter as if they are their “dear life”, are their own ways in fighting with these outdated systems.
Monsters Made by the Power Regime
When art becomes an individualized experience, Conversations, You, Me, I, Us (2023, dir. Pyae Sone Tun Mung) could be deduced into two meanings: a father struggling in the urban city or a man holding down the child-self inside of him. The man was seen with a noose around his neck while cooking, while he encountered a masked, uniformed man pulling him away with the noose. A child and a lady were wearing masks, practically witnessing everything.
I see Conversations, You, Me, I, Us as a variation of the first film: when an individual chooses to restart with new responsibilities, they are now the parent instead of the child who wants freedom. The line “As my child beheads me as peacefully as calm” struck me as a cry for help; he was overjoyed that his child came into the world, but it was suffocating like a noose in the neck, it almost took away his head, both literally and figuratively, he was mentally spiraling out of control.
Though it was not explicitly said that the main culprit was the “Urban”, it was the city, and the situation made him unable to provide the best for all of them. We saw him barely eating any food, a portion of canned food to the most, yet toys were scattered all over the floor. It is as if he gave everything for the sake of his child, nothing left for him. He felt like a failure, he attempted death using the children’s toys, as if giving us a validation that his child he bears took away his freedom. But it was never his choice. He wanted a better life for himself and his family, a life without a suffocating noose around his neck.
While watching all four films, I think of the program as a coming-of-age story in a different order. Conversations, You, Me, I, Us serves as the conclusion to form a continuous coming-of-age story, preceded by Tomorrow Will be a Sunny Day (2024, dir. Mg Bhone) as it feels like a complementary film before the conclusion, perhaps a climax. Tomorrow Will be a Sunny Day tells a story about a not-so-rising-star actor juggling acting gigs to make a living. He has a girlfriend who is currently working as a shopkeeper. They enjoyed the day as usual when the girlfriend nudged a topic that he should be searching for a gig abroad, as well as surprisingly, admitted that she’s been cheating.
Such behavior is not for personal pleasure but rather out of obligation. The clothing store where the girlfriend works actually belonged to the man she has an affair with. It looks like she was only returning a favor given to her in this situation. Their freedom does not necessarily mean they want financial freedom but rather just the right fortune to have a family. Knowing they were not in the right circumstances to start a family, the two discussed the plans forward. In which I think is realistic; starting a relationship, or even a family, means that there are new responsibilities.
While the two short films still tell stories about pursuit of freedom, the thing that differs them from the other two films is their ultimate form of self-defense. The father chooses to end his life, and the girlfriend commits adultery to stay on a job, stimulated and controlled by the power regime, as well as due to their socio-economic circumstances and the influence of the wealthier individuals that takes advantage of them. They somehow are forced to choose to be obliged into these actions by the constraints they are constantly facing, by the end of the day, highlighting the harsh realities that haunt them every day.
I find all the constant labeling, judgment, and perception are nauseating. As the “doomed” generation is used to mock the younger generation as basically incapable of thriving in the future, the older generation in power pretty much have another that is even worse: “Strawberry Generation”, a term that compares our mental well-being as easy to crush–and soft–like the fruit.
And yet, before reaching the conclusion that all of the youths’ failure to thrive is due to their natural states of mind or mental state, have they considered that they are actually the cause of the youth’s problems? The older generation that runs the government, the older generation who owns every damn accommodation and land that makes house pricing so high. The youths are now living in smithereens gathering scrapes of their ruins, in order to survive and live.
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