Interiors

Quite often when Noi is watching one of her Malay dramas from Malaysia we find ourselves commenting on the houses in which the dramas are being played out. I think I'm right in my assumption that these are 'real' houses, rather than studio sets, and that 'real' people live in them when they're not being utilised for dramatic purposes. Well, I say 'real' people, but I should add the qualifier 'rich' real people. It's all intended to be very inspirationally aspirational for the poor viewers, like ourselves, I suppose, but it doesn't quite work like that. Not for us, anyway, for whom the general effect is to confirm the joys of a simple, cheap kind of life. The problem essential to any display of affluence is not so much bad taste (though there's a fair amount of that on display) as an inherent lack of lived warmth. Whatever happened to cosiness?