By Choo Zheng Xi (Editor-At-Large) and KJ
We wonder if Rear-Admiral Lui Tuck Yew knows that our city was the subject of a Hollywood film. No, not Ivan Heng’s cameo in Luc Besson’s Fifth Element, but a full Hollywood film shot on scene in Singapore.
In 1978, Hollywood director Peter Bogdanovich adapted Paul Theroux’s novel “Saint Jack” to screen. Set in Singapore, the story’s protagonist Jack Flowers is a pimp who markets Singaporean girls for an international clientele. His grand scheme is to set up a posh brothel to service expatriates.
In 2010 Singapore, an admiral is tasked to dress up a repressed and repressive country’s arts scene and pimp it to the world. Yes, truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
With no hint of irony, Rear-Admiral Lui wants to launch a “sophisticated branding and marketing campaign” to sell Singapore as a Cultural Hub. Another Hub in the Singapore four-wheel drive, along with our Medical and Pharmaceutical Hub, Sports Hub and Technology Hub! But what if there is nothing to sell?
Never mind, to spearhead the Singaporean Cultural Revolution, private business to the fore!
And we know the tragedy of Cultural Revolutions. Might this cultural revival from our Economic Strategies Committee be the ominous start to the tragicomedy of Rear-Admiral Lui?
Everyone in his audience knows that Art in Singapore is damned to be nailed to the cross of financial imperative, a mere prop in the great play of The Singapore Economy. Only that mere props and utilitarian motives don’t make great plays.
Yet the déjà vu! This plays on and on in repeat mode!
Talk of a “knowledge-based economy” and “creative nation” is as old the 1997 financial crisis. Then in 2000, a “Renaissance City” masterplan was unveiled, throwing big money to grow culture. And in 2002, an Economic Review Committee sat and smoked, hoping to establish for Singapore “a reputation as a vibrant and exciting New Asia creative hub.”
The ESC 2010 is fully entitled to dust off this ancient storyline and adapt it to the times, no matter how hackneyed and insipid the dialogue, or how moth-eaten and ill-fitting the theatre costumes are. But maybe it’s time to ask why the Revival simply never came.
The recycling of stale methods and ideas aside, where have we failed in our numerous attempts in the last fifteen years? Are such government diktats counter-effective? Is the overbearing PAP government and its self-serving system of governance the very source of Singapore’s cultural impotence?
And what of the role of the mainstream media in contributing to this sad predicament? Singapore might have succeeded if the media had not been creatively castrated, but had instead stroked up some hard questions. A vibrant cultural city can hardly be built with a media curtailed by PAP-apparatchiks and strict publishing laws.
Cultural landmarks in New York like Greenwich Village and Harlem did not owe their international renown to government micromanagement and media censorship. The one unifying characteristic that defines the boroughs of New York and the subcultures in every borough is a spirit of freedom, dynamic social movements, and organic communities.
The Village was the epicenter of the counter-culture movement birthed in a historical moment where the tension of extreme societal disaffection intersected with a spirit of freedom, and that gave succor to the eternal Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.
Similarly, the Harlem Renaissance of the early 1900s traces its roots to a culture of defying hegemonic social norms, manifested in the lyrical longing for social change that exploded into an apotheosis of expression.
In the absence of freedom and play, no amount of government grants and top-down directives are going to “create” creative spaces.
As the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison once observed, authoritarian regimes and dictatorial despots are often fools, but not foolish enough to give artists the freedom to follow their creative instincts and to publish their judgments. “They know they do so at their own peril.”
To Morrison, this specter of unwritten novels, swallowed poems, whispered fear, outlawed languages, upstaged plays and canceled films, is “as though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink.” Morrison’s words reveal such a Singapore.
In truly vibrant cities, the only ink that remains invisible, and should remain invisible, is the government’s.
When Bogdanovich and his crew filmed “Saint Jack” in Singapore, it was never cleared with the Ministry of Information. They knew it would be no-go. So instead, they submitted a bogus script entitled “The Jack of Hearts”, and then filmed “Saint Jack” under cover. Predictably, “Saint Jack” was banned in Singapore after its international release.
If Bogdanovich had not his guts and guile, the acclaimed “Saint Jack” would never have seen the light of day. It has been thirty years since, and the movie was un-banned only in 2006. Yet, the script of PAP governance and censorship can hardly be said to have changed.
Singapore’s cultural failure cannot be separated from its illiberal regime and climate of insularity: a wishful utopia haunted by a litany of laws.
Unless the very structures that constrain our creativity and stunt our growth are removed, we can only wish good luck (once again) to the uncommon courage of our rare Admiral, the Jack Flowers of our art industry.
And we would have enjoyed his tragicomedy even more if we weren’t ourselves his real victims.
Related posts:
- Singapore – no grand story to tell the world
- Gagged by the church – Foyce Le Xuan
- Some creative messiness, please
- Jack Neo to screen new movie at City Harvest church service
- Have suggestions for the Govt?
Please lah, we are singaporeans leh, no Revolution of any sort of thingie wan lah.
There is a tendency to blame the PAP government for the zealous and widespread censorship in Singapore. In fact, as the Rony Tan incident has revealed, an additional hurdle to overcoming censorship is the general intolerance of the Singapore public to views which are disagreeable and offensive to their own world view. As other commentators have noted, all sorts of communities in Singapore are quick to demand the arrest and imprisonment of views which offend themselves (like the pressure from LGBT groups when christian groups preach that homosexuality is evil, or continued ban on the brilliant “Life of Brian” for fear of offending Catholics, etc.). These people are slow to take a stand to say that “although I’m seriously offended, you have the right to say what you’ve just said”. But taking free speech seriously means a move towards the latter direction, not the other way round.
Oh yes our govt only nuture artists,filmmakers or entertainers with hefty funding and publicity if ONLY they “fulfill” PAP’s propaganda!
Could you believe local film”Money No Enough” made a S$6mil box-office when the entire population was around 3.5mil then( deduct the Malays,Indians,young children and old folks-that leaves you about 1mil viewers;which means everyone went for it?Possible?)
Following its so-called success,the second movie “That One No Enough” tried to make inroads into Taiwan and only sold 47 tickets! (Obviously the local media kept mum).
By funding partisan filmmakers and “spin” the media to create a false “success” in the local entertainment scene is most disgusting.
Remember how the Auditor-General was questioning why the S$41mil funding of local films had not met its returns of due taxes? (Just go ask Raintree Pictures how much of its investments in local or foreign films had actually turned in profits.If so,then the Auditor-General would not making such statements.)
Our taxpayers money that went into such funding could be used for more meaningful artistic film or theatre works.
Of course,that would ONLY be possible if funding is not pegged to partisan political considerations!!
i believe this article raised some very valid points. it questions whether the government’s approach to arts and its ideal to make singapore a ‘cultural hub’ is a realistic one. despite its long and constant effort, it seems to yield very little success till now.
in my opinion, there are some plausible reasons why the way the government promotes the arts is not working very well. one major problem is the way it see the arts. its aim is to use the arts as a “sophisticated branding and marketing campaign” to promote the country, like a international billboard. it is treated as a commodity. but this functional approach is not very effective, if not downright counter-productive, despite the amount of money spent on it.
arts is, first an foremost a way, an expression of the spirit of the time. it reflects the spirit of the people and the nation. it links the people through a common collectivity. it can become the emblem of one’s identity. until the government sees this as the primary aim, the arts cannot really flourish to its full potential. until the government sidestep their profit-making mentality with regards to the arts, their pronouncement to make the country a ‘cultural hub’ will always ring empty and pretentious.
a vibrant arts scene is ultimately beneficial to the country and its people itself. it can forge identity. when we look at the french, the english, the indian, the chinese or the japanese, we see how their arts reinforce and become part of their living unconscious identity and being. it is this that makes them so interesting, and so much sought after. this is what attracts the world to them.
so let’s not put the cart before the horse. let’s get our perspective correct. before we go start any ”sophisticated branding and marketing campaign”, let’s first cultivate a vibrant arts scene for ourselves because we are proud of who we are and of what we have, and because we want to preserve and express things that are precious to us. let’s put aside the selling points for this one instance, let’s not be cheap peddlers of the arts. then maybe one day, we can interest others because we have something truly uniquely Singapore.
hub again?
“the Chinese is acknowledged as the 2nd most intelligent race after the Jews..” – Sad
Wow, what does that make my half Chinese, half Jewish son? He is indeed recognised as gifted and talented child at age 10. But luckily I have taken him out of Spore education system so that his talent and brilliant mind can have the freedom to stretch, explore and create. I don’t hide others success from him, (like SG media) instead I use them to inspire him and I let him make mistakes.