"Kopitiam": A Coffee Shop in Homophobic Malaysia Serves Up a Gay Character

Since Malaysia is next door to Thailand, I always thought it was a primarily Buddhist, gay-friendly or at least gay-ok country.  No, it's only 20% Buddhist, and extremely homophobic.

Only 9% of the population surveyed stated that "homosexuality should be accepted" (in the U.S., it's slightly over 50%).  The sodomy law still exists, and is enforced; Parliament considered but abandoned a bill to push up the penalty from 20 years to death.  The Prime Minister has warned gay diplomats to stay out of the country.  An attempt to hold a gay rights march was suppressed.

So it came as a surprise to find a Malaysian sitcom with a gay character on Netflix.

Kopitiam, which ran in Malaysia from 1998 to 2003, starred Joanna Bessey as Marie Tan, who runs a coffee shop (kopitiam) full of wacky coworkers and customers:

1.-2. Uncle Chan and Uncle Kong  (Manu Maniam, Tan Jin Chor), who have been bickering best friends for 40 years and act like a gay couple, except for their frequent references to women.

3.Susan (Lynn Teoh), a lawyer from Singapore (the Singaporeans are stereotyped as uptight, humoroless, and mercenary).

4. Joe (Rashid Salieh), an aspiring actor who takes a lot of colorful part-time jobs while waiting to be discovered.  Also the only cast member I found a beefcake photo for.

More after the break

5. Steven (Douglas Lim), an aspiring hairdresser

I watched three episodes. Two from the first season:

1.  Steven loses his job at the hair salon after accidentally setting a customer's hair on fire.Marie giveshim a job at the coffee shop,but he mucks that up. She lets Steven style her hair, but hates the results.But her new boyfriend loves it, and hires Steven to do the hair for the performers in his new music video.

2. Marie never drinks coffee.Steven this that this is odd for the owner of a coffee shop, so he sneaks some into her lunch. The caffeine makes her super-horny.  She throws herself at the visiting health inspector, then Joe, Steven, Susan,and even Uncle Chan.They have to  lock her  up until the caffeine wears off.

3.  In Season 5, Steven has his own  hair salon. He won't let the staff use the computer (it's for customers only), so they try to get him addicted to the internet  so he will relent."See -- you can send emails! You can download music!  You can look at pictures...."

Steven scoffs.  "Those women are naked! Who'se going to be paying attention to their hair?"

Steven's sexual identiy is not openly addressed (it is illegal in Malaysia to have gay characters in tv or movies unless they "repent or die.")  But everyone seems to know about it: he doesn't participate in the others' conversations about girls, and when Marie throws herself at him, she says "I love a man who's in touch with his feminine side."

I went through the first four years of plot synopses, and no girlfriend is mentioned, but he probably gets one at some point -- can't be too, obvious, or you'll be censored.

I haven't found any verification online that the character was written or acted as gay.  Apparently the show was infamous for its diversity. Malay has some strong religious and ethnic divisions,and it showed that Chinese, Malay, and Indian, Muslim, Buddhist,and Christian could co-exist without confrontations, and even be friends.

In 2019,Douglas Lim returned to Kopitiam:Double Shot, a sequel featuring a new generation of Kopitiam regulars.  It's not on Netflix, so I can't say if it was more or less open.