THE ONE ABOUT PRIMADELI

Useful Link(s):

• Original Facebook Post: Post Link (29th April 2016)

It's important to recognise and voice out unfair treatments in Singapore. Especially if it concern matters of livelihood and employability, we need to voice it out.

As the conversations on race unfolds, I think it's good that this Primadeli controversy came to light in the mainstream. We need things like this to remind people that Singapore is not as racially harmonious as we would like it to be. And we need to do SOMETHING about it. It can be education, policies, enforcement and criminalisation, etc. As long as people are willing to participate and engage institutions in this dialogue, we would be able to keep the conversation alive and truly dream of a racially harmonious future.

We cannot airbrush this away by blindly subscribing to the rhetoric that Singapore is already a successful multi-racial country.

Taking a form class with an almost equal ratio of Chinese and Malay students, it becomes apparent to me that tensions do exist. Neither group will allow itself to be subsumed under another; there is no distinction between majority and minority. As I observe the way my students interact, I see matters of race come to light. Students start to grapple with uncomfortable stereotypes and untrue lingual labels of their own race. There was once several students in my class got offended by remarks that the Malays are indigenous people, while Chinese are immigrants who lack legality to their stay here. Quarrels happen often because of a lack of understanding towards history. We do need to ask ourselves what is the thing that is conditioning the young to devote to an unfair perception of society.

As issues of race unravel, I think there are several things that ought to be discussed in the mainstream. How are we treating the Indian community? Immigrants? Do we talk about gender inequality as passionate as we talk about racism? When would we finally be able to properly and politely allow discussions of homophobia and transphobia to enter the mainstream. This discussion will go on and on, I do hope that we would be able to come to a common understanding eventually.

摆渡 UPSTAGE

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• Original Instagram Post: Post Link (28th June 2015)

刚看完《摆渡》, 不知道为什么眼角有些湿湿的, 可能是因为有所感动吧。这部戏让我想起为什么自己会喜欢剧场。看戏对我而言不只是一种被动的接受, 也不只是对于商品的消费。更多的时候我觉得在剧场里的那两个小时是我一个月里思维最为活跃的时间。我必须一边看一边想; 试图回想过去看过的戏, 在几秒间做一些联系和整理; 试图推敲眼前的视觉, 对白, 表演等剧场元素所承载的目的和意义; 试图拆开与重组戏与历史, 戏与社会, 戏与人之间的关系和冲突。《摆渡》让我感受到看戏时的刺激, 并让我深深感受到剧场工作人心中燃不尽的火。

麦克白 MACBETH

Useful Link(s): 

• Original Facebook Post: Post Link (23rd February 2016)

(Photo Source: 众观)

一部好戏的力量在于它能在短暂的时间里改变某人的思维，让他从此改变他对某某人事物的看法。许多剧作家都有引导观众突破自己思维的独特方法。有些戏能让你在瞬间灵动、流泪、感怀、回忆。有些戏让你看了咬牙切齿，恨不得马上离开剧院。但在优劣之间要如何取舍什么是好戏，什么又不是？对于这个我本身也觉得很难界定。有些人觉得《爸妈不在家》是完美的，但又有些人觉得越看越有瑕疵。有些人觉得《钱不够用》俗不可耐，但又有些人觉得它能抓住眼球，通俗易懂。

最近看了华艺节的表演之一《麦克白》。看完之后第一个反应：为什么那么辛苦地腾出时间来看一个那么烂的戏？

这是一部改编自莎士比亚经典的戏，但是除了保留莎翁的对白，所有剧场表现形式都似乎脱离了原著。其实这是我能够理解的，毕竟现代人与旧作的共鸣不多。通过改写赋予文本新生命是必要的。剧里采用了一堆荒谬和参差不齐的手法来呈现经典。从开始的十几分钟，坐在观众席的我就开始感到不安。剧里偶尔严肃、偶尔夸张、偶尔悲壮、偶尔可笑，最后还开了枪，让人很难集中精神观察台上的一切。怎么中途洒水的情节处理得那么笨拙？演员还必须在漆黑一片中狼狈地抹干地板。尽管听某某人说抹地的动作具有节奏感，似乎有特别意义，我还是觉得这些安排都相当怪异，可笑。习惯坐在前排的我，也清楚看见西洋演员坐在椅子上观戏时的尴尬表情。怎么演员本身都好像不怎么相信这个作品似的。

看戏时所感受到的“不安”当然可以被解读为“布莱希特的疏离效果”，因为史诗剧场就是要这样荒谬。除此之外，我们当然还可以套用其它的理论，但是我们要在什么情况下才能决定：这部戏是纯粹的“烂”？我们要拿出什么证据才能裁定一部戏只是在滥用一些剧场呈现手法？一部戏又要如何确保在“抽离”的同时，观众是在进行思考，而不是对戏感到单纯的厌恶。导演是否应该能够预测观众的反应，并且加以引导，确保在100分钟后，观众的思维确实是改变了，而不是被封锁起来。如果观众在看戏的过程中，开始感到厌恶，不想保持开放的态度，戏是否还算完整？

这是我看完戏之后，最初的想法。

GRIND

Useful Link: 

• Original Instagram Post: Post Link (24th March 2016)

Grind, 24th March 2016

I think when people think about theatre, they imagine a space with a stage. And rows and rows of seats. A very comfortable spectator position that draws you in. However, Toy Factory's Grind smashed this notion to bits with a very inventive design of the entire theatrical space. There is no distinction between on-stage and off-stage because the black box is stripped of its familiar seats. The spectators gather in the middle and move around the black box, literally kept on their toes, observing every single movement intently. 

The spotlights shine harshly on the spectators, casting a great discomfort and disconnect from the usual theatre experience. This arrangement reminded me of how darkness induces a voyeuristic gaze. Under the glaring light, the spectator becomes naked and present. 

They need to think. 

They have to think. 

The topic of the play is nothing new but the formalist elements changed the way people received the subject matter. The space forces people to think and be kept in a reflective mode. And invokes a reflection about the plight of LGBT folks. 

Thank you to the fabulous people at Toy Factory! Another great work to add to our LGBT canons.  

TRANSNATIONAL CHINESE CINEMA

Useful Link(s): 

• First featured on: https://singaporereviewofbooks.org/2015/08/12/transnational-chinese-cinema/ (12th August 2015)

Chinese cinema has a history that has stretched beyond a century, yet film scholarship in this field has only begun to flourish in the past two decades. The complexity of “Chinese cinema” is perhaps the foremost reason for this torpid movement in academia. What does being Chinese mean? At various historical and geographical moments, this question carries vastly different interpretation —lingual, racial, national and cultural— each attached to its own unique set of problems. Certainly the complications increase when we try to understand Chinese-ness in a likewise perplexing discipline: cinema. The filmic medium has been an important arena for debates and negotiations of gender, sexuality and embodiment issues, enlightening scholars on how bodies function on screen.

With this in mind, Transnational Chinese Cinema does not aim to provide all the answers to explain what Chinese cinema is or what it is not. Instead it cuts deep into the confounding entanglement, “to begin a conversation around questions of corporeality and desire” and “film production, distribution, exhibition, and reception in a transnational Chinese context” (9). The collection of ten essays puts together the perspectives of scholars at various vantage points in the film studies domain. This article aims to highlight the exceptional efforts in this critical endeavour.

The ethics of failure is a key entry point in the understanding of Transnational Chinese Cinema. In Chapter One, “The Ruined Bodies of Transnational Chinese Cinema”, Brian Bergen-Aurand offers an enlightening and innovative reading of ruins. While ruins are conventionally linked to destruction and decay, the writer reimagines it as a site for rebirth and revival, highlighting the “experience, history, memory, culture, preservation, heritage and inheritance” that comes together with it (47). A vital justification brought forth in this chapter would be the theory of the ruined gaze, which is a way of looking at films by exposing and displacing the gazes of classical apparatus theory. By directing this focus onto films such as In the Mood for Love (2000), Bergen-Aurand offers an opportunity for spectators to “rethink the ethics of neighbours and locality in regard to these films and the spectral bodies they imagine” (47).

Building on this notion of failure, Mary Mazzilli explores the strategy of failure in films of Ruan Lingyu and Lin Dai in Chapter Three, “Female Chinese Stars on Screen: Desiring the Bodies of Ruan Lingyu and Linda Lin Dai”. Mazzilli posits that a close reading of these actresses’ films unveils a resistance against traditional gazes that position women as the fetishist object of the male gaze. The failure of feminine embodiment to align itself to the directorial narrative and cinematic frame activates a spectatorship that refutes the objectification of the feminine other.

Chapter Six, “Thinking the Inutility: Temporality, Affect and Embodiment in Useless and Walker” is another remarkable piece in Transnational Chinese Cinema which follows in the same vein as the previous essays. Hongfei Liao alerts us to the dangers of capitalism throughout his piece and further illustrates how the conception of “inutilizing the inutility” in Jia Zhangke and Tsai Ming-liang’s documentary films could be a potent force to resist against capitalism’s belligerence. The writer warns that filmic representations of inutility run the risk of being re-appropriated by capitalist logic. Hence it is necessary to rethink a new politics of “inutilizing the inutility” that could transgress this system of consumption, “for the purpose of endlessly relaunching more action and rethinking” (151). Liao thus embraces the embodiment of failure in these films, specifically in its temporality, affect and embodiment, as it activates “the audience to judge the scene”, calling us to “problematize [the] filmic problematization and even our own problematization” (152).

Bergen-Aurand describes the transnational Chinese film model as the ideal cinematic model to address questions about film production, distribution, exhibition and also reception in the introduction essay of Transnational Chinese Cinema. Sim Jiaying explicates this notion most thoroughly in Chapter Two, “Transnational Cinema as a Matter of Address: Considering Eros and Embodiment in Wong Kar-wai’s The Hand”. Sim expounds the manner in which Wong’s short film invokes a transnational cinematic reception through an “affective mode of address” (63). Instead of relying on filmic narrative to create meaning, Sim explains that Wong’s segment in Eros (2004) rely on film style to draw out spectator desire. This is a key component in understanding what transnational cinema can do and how transnational cinema can affect audiences on an international scale, regardless of their locality.

Other remarkable essays in Transnational Chinese Cinema include Hee Wai-Siam’s comprehensive account of famous film auteur Tsai Ming-liang’s body of work in “Coming Out in the Mirror: Rethinking Corporeality and Auteur Theory with Regard to the Films of Tsai Ming-liang” and Andrew Grossman’s insightful cultural study of Hong Kong’s adult rated cinema in “Random Act of Sensible Violence: Horror, Hong Kong Censorship and the Brief Ascent of ‘Category III’”.

Overall, Transnational Chinese Cinema touches the edge of previously unexplored grounds, providing new perspectives on the ways films can be read. By incorporating the sensibilities of scholars adept in film theory, embodiment studies, philosophy and cultural studies, the collection engages insightfully with Chinese cinema, charting the way we encounter transnational Chinese cinema and how we in turn interact with it.

Transnational Chinese Cinema: Corporeality, Desire, and Ethics of Failure.  Eds. Brian Bergen-Aurand, Mary Mazzilli, Hee Wai-Siam. Los Angeles: Bridge21 Publications, 2014.

TENDENCIES IN BOO JUNFENG AND EVE SEDGWICK

Useful Links:

• Original Short Film URL: http://youtu.be/YGlG1AVq1PU 
• First featured on: http://foreigninfluence.com/2014/04/10/tendencies-in-boo-junfeng-and-eve-sedgwick/ (10th April 2014). 

Edits:

• A revision has been made regarding the definition of “keluar baris”. (1st May 2016)

Anyone who takes a first look at Boo Junfeng’s Keluar Baris (2007) would immediately assume that this Singaporean short film is merely about a boy’s anxiety over his pending National Service enlistment. However, anyone who has read and absorbed the work of the prominent queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick would probably have a radically different interpretation of it. In her 1993 book, Tendencies, Sedgwick asserts that institutions often align their principles neatly, creating a strict unified ideology which, in turn, produces silent presumptions about our identity. Social structures simplify reality and, in turn, simplify our visions of ourselves. In an attempt to vitiate the rigidity of such systems, Sedgwick proposes a perverse reading of texts, a reading that goes against the grain, that imbues these systems with fascination in order to disengage us from their enforced rigor. She asks us to uncover the queer nuances embedded in texts by unsimplifying them. Seeing “queer” aspects as the “open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically,” Sedgwick offers queer readings as alternatives views of our world (with political potential) that are so often neglected or hidden by the heteronormative paradigm.

Queer representations are heavily policed and discouraged across Singapore’s media landscape. In the Censorship Review Committee Report 2010, guidelines on television programming provide clear indications to screen PG13 shows only after 11pm. Programs with any portrayal of queer characters—such as Glee—typically belong in this category and are effectively exiled to a timeslot outside primetime. In film and theatre, homosexual content is routinely classified as “explicit” regardless of the degree of sexual explicitness. Given these national regulations, it is undoubtedly difficult to find images of queer life in any Singaporean media.

However, such overt restrictions do not mean that queer representations do not exist in across Singapore. It simply means that we have to take a closer look to uncover the queer moments in our texts. Filmmakers might find ways to smuggle queer meanings into their art. Texts could also gain new connotations over time. It is thus vital to review the media to search for queer meanings hidden in them. The works of Boo Junfeng, and Keluar Baris in particular, offer moments that prompt our engagement with Sedgwick’s charge for a queer reading because they resist simplifying our social structures and our senses of ourselves.

Keluar Baris presents opportunities for readings that could radically subvert a conventional default heteronormative interpretation of it and provides a guide for reconsidering our approach to other works by Boo Junfeng and other Singaporean artists.

The film follows the story of an eighteen year-old boy who returns to Singapore from Spain to serve his National Service (NS). NS is a mandatory conscription program every Singaporean male has to go through for 22 to 24 months and then remain on reserve for until he is 40 or 50 years old, depending upon rank. Throughout the film, the recruit seems particularly melancholic. Characters around him are quick to explain his gloom as an anxiety towards enlistment, and these explanations may hold some validity. However, there are gaps and dissonances throughout the film that suggest he could also be suffering from a certain homosexual anxiety and desire that continue to trouble him.

A lingering shot of a Spanish boy.

“Keluar Baris” is a Malay military command for dismissal, commonly used in the Singapore Armed Forces. It signifies a dismissal from duty, a return back home. The return home, back to one’s family would often be regarded as a cheerful event. Yet he seems to appear more displeased about keluar baris. Could it be the obvious lack of familial warmth? Or the pending enlistment that every single person in the film can’t seem to stop mentioning? Yet, even as these possibilities may obtain, a key instant suggests that the boy’s melancholy might actually stem from the possible separation from a likely gay relationship from overseas. While the boy sits in his room browsing pictures on his computer, a portrait of a young male Spaniard flashes across the screen. It could be brushed off as a casual perusal of his travel photos, but the mise-en-scène bends things. The shot is framed by the recruit’s shoulder, which invites an erotic gaze at the back of his neck and over his arm. As he clicks through the photos, the camera lingers for a full second when he reaches the photo of the Spanish boy, suggesting the heightened importance of this person. The mild sexual tension created by the relation between the recruit’s body and the foreign portrait builds. Then, it is quickly dissipated when the recruit’s father steps into the room. The gay sensibility of this scene is returned to the heteronormative framework of the straight household.

Gazing at enlistees. 

The film’s excess drama around enlistment could be construed as a view of conscription as the seizure of one’s personal liberty by the state, in general. Yet, it could also refer to a more specific situation. It is widely known and accepted that queer soldiers are severely marginalised within Singapore’s military. Soldiers who openly declare their homosexuality or present themselves as queer are required to register as “302.” They would subsequently be banned from command schools and combat vocations. This discriminatory practice is normalised in the armed forces and Singapore. Thus, the boy’s misery when he sees two uniformed enlistees on the bus could be more than just his apprehension towards enlistment. It could be an invocation of his distress over being discriminated against. He could be looking at his own fear of being forced out of the closet or the fear of being forced to stay in.

An airplane flying into the distance. 

The film also sets up a relation between Spain and Singapore, between a land of longing and a land of pragmatic demands. In the closing scene, the boy looks out the window and we see a plane flying into the distance. This seems rather peculiar as it hints of his desire to leave, even though he just returned. Welded with the soundtrack of piano tinkling throughout the film, his melancholy over being “home” becomes an opening for queer interpretation. Spain legalised same-sex marriage in 2005. Singapore retains the Penal Code Section 377A, which criminalises sex between men. Spain symbolises a queer time and place for this boy. Singapore represents a present home tied to heteronormative simplification and rationalization.

Boo’s skilful insertion of Spain as the boy’s gay sanctuary could go unnoticed by spectators, but on a closer reading, such an understanding seems logical and plausible. These gaps in the film twist and bend the heteronormative reading that has dominated our way of viewing films. Sedgwick’s proposal for a queer reading of texts hence disarticulates and disengages from the usual normative methods of consuming art straight. It is a call to “run against the grain” and embrace the multitude of possibilities spread throughout queer.

Prologue

“But I like the inconveniences.” 
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.” 
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” 
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.” 
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.” 
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” 
There was a long silence. 
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last. 

~ Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

These are the words that left an indelible mark in me when I started my literature education about ten years ago. How morbidly empowering it is to be able to claim "the right to be unhappy". In a society obsessed with utilitarian goodness, the individual is often left to fend for his own rights. Rights of minorities often become a negligible factor in the grand design of things. This quote is a reminder to myself, to resist the wave of conformism. To not let status quo and the larger power structures dictate the will of the tiny and feeble. I don't know what I'm going to do, or in this case, I don't know what I'm going to write about, I only know that I can contribute in tiny ways to a more diverse, critical and alternative sociopolitical discourse. That would be my attempt at affecting change.