Censorship Now!

The law professor Alan Dershowitz once said that everyone wants to censor something. Jews want to censor Holocaust deniers. Evangelicals want to censor The Da Vinci Code. Feminists want to censor sexist pornography. I want to censor reflections which are really only a summary of class.

Case in point: I’m in the office, technically working, and I peruse the latest updates on the writer’s strike on IMDB.com. Lo and behold, there’s a post about Singapore. Media in Singapore? In the international press! How could this be?

I immediately assumed we had censored something else, but it seems doubtful to me that Singapore censorship would make the international news. Oh no, apparently the MDA has made a rap. And I have to tell you, it’s awful.

It doesn’t tell you about the MDA and how it can help you. It doesn’t describe  its function in society. I don’t believe it ever intented to. It was supposed to show the creativity of the MDA (although any fans of the Black Eyed Peas or Gorillaz will recognize the symphonic stylings, and iPod ad aficionados can immediately notice the derivative nature of the chorus’s visual design.)

To me, it epitomizes how Singapore can really get things wrong. Somebody in a high position approved this video. They thought they were being so daring, showing civil servants dancing and rapping and wearing superhero costumes and impersonating a Godfather. And it could have been, if they had gone all the way with it. Serious people having fun can be quite funny. But they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Because they’re not fun jobs!! There’s no fun in manpower management or the processing of grant applications. And we’re stuck with rhymes like: (All grammar errors are theirs.)

“Media-Action is one of my directions/
Community and international relations.”

Or this creative gem:

“The time has come to build our talents/
These are the strength for the new challenge.” 

I sure hope it sounds better in the Mandarin version. Or at least rhymes….

I know nothing about the production company who made this video (If you do, please reply to the post.) I suspect the fun part of the idea came from them. And shockingly enough, the fun part was well-received when they pitched the idea. Then somewhere down the line in the development process, some woman (or man, but in my fantasy it’s  a woman) says, “But it can’t be all fun. We have to show them we do serious work.” And then everyone else around the table, because they all wanted a raise, nodded and agreed. Why did no one stop this woman? Throw their Razr phone at her? Why did no one say, “That’s a terrible idea!! If it’s not completely fun, then it looks like we’re not in on the joke. Then we become the joke.”

And then we’re stuck with the piece we have now, neither serious nor fun. And worst of all, not funny. Where are our censors when we really need them?

Guilty Pleasures

Fat has inspired me. She originally promised to write about the Spice Girls before she ended up writing about The Little Mermaid. I will steal her spark and write about the Spice Girls myself.

 I don’t particularly like the Spice Girls myself. But back when I was in secondary school, I sure did, particularly track number 7 on Spice: “Who do you Think you Are”. I’m sure Nat is smacking himself right now (Oh that Mister Ryan. I used to like him.) But if I’m not going to have genuine favorites, I have to at least admit to things I like.

I really like Austin Powers. I like to quote him. I like that the second movie really has all the same jokes as the first movie, but they last longer.

 I like Desperate Housewives. I like when the Edie character competes with the Susan character for the same man.

I am absolutely addicted to this simple block breaking game on my MotoRok’r hand phone.

But these are the silly things. What about the bizarre? I am addicted to typing information into airline websites. I know that Emirates airlines flies not only to Dubai from Singapore, but to Brisbane, Melbourne, and Auckland. I know if you fly Philippine Airlines from SG to Manila to Los Angeles, the plane has to stop on the island of Guam as well so it doesn’t run out of fuel.

In that same bizarre pattern, I’m obsessed with water drainage systems. One of my favorite vacation cities is Luang Prabang in Laos, and one of my favorite things about it are the beautiful brick water drainage units. I can watch water drains for long stretches of time, and one of my short scripts is about a Singaporean man who builds a boat so he can sail to work down a storm drain rather than sit in traffic.

Surely I’m not the only one. Tell me the things that make you bizarre. We can console each other knowing we’re not alone.

You’re my Favourite!!

(Author’s note: I can’t decide whether or not to put the ‘u’ in favorite. I can’t decide whether to stay true to my American roots or write for my Singaporean audience.)

I’ve been thinking it’s time for me to get a new favorite movie. One of the quirks which make me unusual as a film student (and now teacher) is that I have little interest in seeing movies more than once. If I need to analyze it for a project, or show it in a class, naturally I will, but typically I don’t want to revisit movies I’ve already seen. I tend to have a photographic memory when it comes not only to movies, but to the experiences surrounding them.

The movie we’re going to watch on Friday, Election, I saw with Becca Doten at the Century City 14 screen theater. I remember I saw The Pelican Brief with Aunt Rose at the Buenaventura Mann 6 theater before it became a discount theater. I can even remember I ate Sour Patch Kids and Diet Coke, and this was in 1993. I remember there was a fight during Gladiator, which was far more exciting than anything on the screen, and after the movie they gave us all a free pass to come back to the movies again.

The first time I saw Living Out Loud , my currect fovourite movie, was in my apartment on cable. I believe it was the Love Stories channel. Interesting, because the movie is certainly not a love story. I fell in love with the movie then. I’ve always put story at the top of my importance list for good movies, and something about this story clicked with me. It was about rugs being pulled out from under our feet, and the way getting up and dusting ourselves off allows us to reinvent ourselves. Maybe because I was graduating university in a few weeks, or maybe it was because my mom was going through a divorce, but I was in a dusting-off and starting-again mode.

A couple weeks before coming to Singapore, my mom and I watched Living Out Loud again. It was still good, but now I felt like my life had direction, and my mom was single and happy about it. The movie didn’t have anywhere the same impact and I wondered if I had over-rated it four years earlier.

Does that mean I need to go back to my previous favorite movie Fearless, about a man who survives an airplane crash? I’m scared to watch it again, because it’s been over 10 years, and I’m obviously not the same person now I was in Secondary 2 when I watched it on HBO at 11 o’clock at night. What if I don’t like it anymore?

It’s the same thing with my favorite two books. I read them both in high school. While nothing I’ve read since then makes me want to stand up and say, “Wow! This is my new favorite book!” I also wonder if I would still love them if I read them again. Is Alanis Morrissette’s “You Learn” still my favorite song? Is Ethiopian still my favorite kind of food? Is Chicago still my favorite play? Is Fat still my favorite student? (I put that one in just to see if she’s paying attention. She’s actually my second favorite student.)

Many people struggle to name their favorite movies because they think there are several that fit the bill. I struggle because I wonder if none fit the bill, that a favorite movie has to capture my mood and my emotion at the time I watch it perfectly. It’s steadily changing.

A mid-week pick-me-up

If you’re feeling bored, feel free to offer your opinions on the nature of evil by adding a comment on the Salihin-Ryan reflection 3 smack-down here.

And they all Lived Happily Ever After….

We’ll call this entry part 2 of the investigative journalism I conducted last week looking for Singaporeans. Last weekend, I had some success, because I went to a place where very few foreigners tread: the Singapore Army Museum.

The Army Museum is located in Jurong, just across the lagoon from the Singapore Discovery Centre. It’s a stunning building, with sharp angles on its exterior and a unique walkway that leads up to the top floor entrance. In terms of a museum, it’s well designed and interactive, with movies and video games playing as prominent a role as captioned photographs. The interior of the museum left me with mixed feelings, though.

It is not a particularly honest museum, in that it makes everything the army does seem valuable and beneficial. It feels like it’s trying to prop up the general societal belief that the Army is good. But if everyone already believes their army is good, do we need a museum to talk about it? Shouldn’t the intention of a museum to be to bring to life information about its topic previously unknown by its audience? In this regard, the museum succeeds. I suspect most Singaporeans do not know about the humanitarian work the Army engaged in while serving in Jordan, or the assistance they provided to earthquake victims in the Philippines. How fantastic these commitments are. I suppose they’re not the most exciting (since they lack conflict), but a lack of excitement doesn’t diminish the importance of humanitarian work.

The most popular exhibit at the museum is a motion picture simulator which creates the excitement of going into battle complete with lasers, jets of smelly water, and bullets blowing holes in the wall. It was certainly stimulating, as exciting as anything in a Hollywood movie, and it was obviously expensive to create. My problem with it: no one dies. You don’t blow things up to scare soldiers. You blow them up to hurt soldiers, and children who watch this show will think only about how exhilerating life in the Army must be. It’s like a video game. Only they forget to mention there’s no reset button after you die.

 The only part that mentions death in the museum is from a PAP minister, who honors those who gave up their lives for Singapore. Who were those people? What about their families? Is that sad information to share with the public? Absolutely, but it’s as much a part of the Army as jumping out of airplanes or blowing things up.

Before moving to Singapore, I lived in Washington, DC, and each week I would visit the Vietnam War Memorial, and it never failed to move me. On it are inscribed the names of every soldier who died or went missing during the war. Soldier’s families leave notes of prayers at the foot of the memorial, and platoon mates come daily to spend time with their deceased friends. It’s a tragic part of my country’s past.

An army, whether in Singapore or the US, is an unfortunate necessity. Perhaps we need to look at why both of those words are true before we build a museum.