Our article looks at how Malaysian national identity was constructed through the stereotypical icon of the kampung and its urban counterparts, in Lat's cartoons. The kampung itself is constituted via the medium of Lat's internationally famous cartoons to a global audience for whom the kampung does not have the immediate point of visceral recognition that it has for Malaysians. Kampung imagery enjoys ongoing prominence in the oeuvre of Malaysia's most influential cartoonist Lat, particularly in his autobiographical pictorial novels reflecting his rural upbringing. The kampung or village holds a complex position in Malaysian government narratives of national identity. In Malaysia's city/country dialectic, the idea of the kampung or village has a strong hold over a modernising and highly regulated country, as a place of respite and retreat from an official nation-building agenda disseminated and implied through mainstream media.
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