I wrote this in March, 2009, for what I intended as the first post in a blog about Singapore life. I didn't start the blog because I realized that much of what I had to say about Singapore was in this disparaging vein, and I didn't feel like pissing off my friends, my employer, or the ministry that granted my work permit (this is the kind of writing that finds foreigners suddenly not getting their visas renewed for unexplained reasons). I could have posted it anonymously, but given how much I knocked others for being critics without faces or guts, I didn't want to be one myself. In the end, I succumbed to the same self-censorship that I lambasted in this piece. In retrospect, I wish I had done more writing like this and posted it while in Singapore, but an additional disincentive was some kind of intellectual anaesthetic in the city's air that made me too docile and content. There are, of course, lots of happy topics to blog about in Singapore, but they'd been covered to death by expats. I didn't want to be the 4,009th amateur to blog about food, sunshine, and shopping malls.
Singapore: It's All Good News
A populace that allows itself to be too tightly controlled finds itself drained of creative significance.
Despite
having worked in the Singapore media market for almost two years, I still start
my day reading the Canadian news. The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail are
my first daily ports of call. Vancouver's Georgia Straight is still my
"local" paper. I also frequently hit The Guardian and CNN. Sometimes
I watch CBC's The National online. Never do I pick up a paper in Singapore. Sure, The
Straits Times is usually lying around the office, but once I've scanned the
headlines, I've consumed all I need to know for the day about my adopted home.
Why?
Singapore is an ostensibly free country with an ostensibly free press. Compared
with media owned and controlled by authoritarian states -- China's for example
-- the major papers of Singapore have the gloss and texture of the most
informative American or European periodical. But Singapore's major papers and
TV networks are, ultimately, owned and controlled, not without interference, by the government. Unlike in China, the media here are not required to
submit their works to government censors before publication or broadcast.
Anyone is free to publish whatever they wish, so long as they are willing to
suffer the repercussions when the government or the courts are offended. It is
then that publishing licenses are known to be suspended or withdrawn, or
writers put at risk of demotions or terminations, with causes never specified.
Fear of the government's wrath guarantees an uncritical press offering a daily
string of "good news" headlines and one-sided stories. Newspapers
from neighbouring Malaysia are banned to protect the delicate population from
being exposed to potential criticism of Singapore's undertakings.
My first
job in Singapore was with a current affairs periodical that was relatively new
to the market, a blend of The New Yorker and GQ with a dash of The Economist.
Such a publication had been rare up to now, for reasons that are as much
political as cultural. Analysis and opinion of issues related to local
governance risks attracting unwanted attention from officials. On the rare
occasion when that boundary is breached, citizens don't lap it up; instead they feel
embarrassed for the poor sods who just put their careers on the line. When I
have questioned this thinking with acquaintances, suggesting that they should
be grateful for the occasional offering of free thought, they give me a gentle
reminder: "You're not in the West. Respect our Asian values." In
other words, it's okay to have an opinion, as long as you keep it to yourself.
Though, I suspect this value is not particularly Asian, as you’d find many Japanese,
Taiwanese, or Thai (to name but a few) being unafraid to take political stances.
Our
magazine set about to engage Singaporeans on a broad range of subjects and
heighten tolerance for open discourse. During a relaxed office party one night,
I made a modest proposal to the general manager. "Wouldn't it be
great," I said, "if we could get this magazine into bookstores in
some other major cities -- Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, LA, New York." The
idea being, if I can pick up The New Yorker or The Economist here, and if we're
in their leagues, shouldn't we be available in the same cities as their
readership? The GM was dismissive. "Err, you don't understand, there's no
point. It's not our market." I pressed the argument that it could be
vital to establish our title as a leading voice on affairs in Asia-Pacific,
given the breadth of regional issues we covered. Alas, I was "too
idealistic."
But, I
learned, Singapore has no voice on its own affairs, let alone the world's --
and it doesn't want one. As I carefully observed past editions of the monthly,
it became apparent that they had fallen into the trap that the government set
for all local media: Print only flattering stories about Singapore, don't
comment too much on the local government, and emphasize the discord and instability
of surrounding Southeast Asian countries. The content tended to portray
Singapore's neighbours as third-world backwaters run by crackpots. The intent
was not to make Singapore look flawless in comparison, but that was the result
of the self-censorship. So, the GM was right after all. Our magazine fell just
short of measuring up to the substance of the international magazines that
inspired us. Alas, the magazine lasted about one year and the company folded.
This
perversion of open dialogue is the country's greatest deficiency. The result is
that Singapore, a beautiful city with one of the most livable environments
you'll find anywhere, is the world's proverbial dumb blonde -- she's the
seductive woman every man desires, but take her out to dinner and she has
nothing intelligent to say.
The list of
newspapers and media outlets that have been sued -- libel-chilled into silence
-- by founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and his family is exhaustive and
includes the Asian Wall Street Journal, Time, The International Herald Tribune,
BusinessWeek, The Financial Times and Bloomberg. The Far Eastern Economic
Review was ordered to fork over damages so grand that the magazine was unable
to pay and thus stopped publishing in Singapore -- an effective ban for the
misdeed of quoting an opposition member. In 2004, The Economist paid damages to
the prime minister and his family for using the word "nepotism" in an
editorial to describe his family's record of receiving prominent government
appointments. No media outlet has ever won a case overseen by Singapore's
ruling-party-appointed judiciary.
It's also
worth noting that the Singapore constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech
and assembly has so many conditions attached as to make the freedom redundant. Any gathering of more than five people without a police-issued permit is
illegal. While the authorities ignore family barbecues, beach volleyball and pro-government
gatherings, permits to assemble in public have been withheld from the
opposition, and small gatherings in private spaces to discuss political affairs
or screen critical documentaries are often broken up when discovered.
Singapore's
ambassador to the USA, Chan Heng Chee, gave this defense of Singapore's
heavy-handed approach last year to The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt: "On an
aircraft carrier [America], you can be playing soccer in one corner and have
jets taking off in another, and the carrier remains stable. In a rowboat
[Singapore], it makes sense for everyone to row in the same direction."
That
metaphor must be greatly offensive to the Singaporean people, who are highly
educated and have no desire to see their country destabilized. Nor do they view
their homeland, one of the world's most lucrative economies, as a shoddy rowboat. The fact is, if the opposition were free to
air their grievances without fear of persecution or imprisonment (the
opposition leader has been jailed twice for stating that the judiciary is not
independent), Singaporeans would continue to re-elect the ruling party by wide
margins. The people here are proud of the accomplishments of the ruling People’s
Action Party and their sound governance. They are not going to be swayed by a
cantankerous opposition who are in no shape to govern. [2012 note: the
opposition parties have become less cantankerous, more credible, and better
admired since I wrote this.]
But let's
assume that the Singapore government is justified in limiting its critics and
forcing the local media to self-censor. What's the harm, when pretty much the
entire population is well looked after and is offered a high quality of life?
What's lost
when people are taught to be quiet and never question is that they lose the
capacity for self-examination, a trait that bears much of the creative voice.
Count the number of important filmmakers and novelists who have emerged from
China, for instance. Even that country, with its repressive, dictatorial
government, has bred an intellectual class responsible for internationally
renowned works of cinema and literature. Jia Zhangke has been called
"the most interesting filmmaker around" by the venerable critic
Jonathan Rosenbaum, and acclaimed American director Martin Scorcese says that Jia has "redifined
cinema." Lou Ye, despite being officially banned from filmmaking,
continues to ply his trade and recently won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes
for his Spring Fever. Zhang Yimou is known worldwide for great films such as
Raise the Red Lantern and dozens more. Other great films by Chinese-born
directors include Yi Yi and The Blue Kite, the latter being a critical portrait of family life during China's transition to Communism, a theme that
required the film to be smuggled out of China to screen at festivals. Then
there is the prolific Chen Kaige, best known for Farewell My Concubine.
Chinese
novelists with works published worldwide are numerous, but let me mention two:
Eileen Chang, who wrote Lust, Caution (which became a celebrated film by director Ang Lee), and Ma Jian, author of the recent
Beijing Coma, a biting look into Chinese politics and the Tiananmen Square
massacre.
All of the
above-mentioned works are available in the West and have been reviewed by the
world's most discerning critics.
And then
there are the internationally recognized painters of the Philippines, whose
works are often politically charged. By contrast, Singapore bans politically
themed art, which only stifles its relevance on the world stage.
Singapore's
novelists, filmmakers and other artists are talented and numerous. But I would
challenge any professional critic or festival-goer in the West to name just
one. That is not to say the works produced in Singapore are not good, just that
virtually none has warranted international recognition. (The "small"
population of 4.6 million cannot be a factor; Paris has 2.2 million people and
no one would doubt that city's global creative influence.)
When you
look at the artists mentioned above, here is the difference: They prove the
maxim that the personal is political. Even for the Chinese, who are certainly
discouraged against speaking their minds, often with force, they somehow find
the courage to do so, and in the process, like Filipino painters and other
political artists, tell the world something relevant about their lives and
their nation. Singaporeans, on the other hand, are too content to risk the
comforts of their first-world standard of living. Their novels and films
dutifully refrain from socio-political themes that might offend the
sensibilities of their government. Many of these works have individual merit,
but end up working collectively and unconsciously as propaganda. Like the local
press, their appearance of being free and uncensored is just that -- an
appearance -- and the result is an artistic community that does not resonate
with the world outside its borders.
Not to say
there are no films or other artworks that deserve recognition. Singapore
Dreaming, for one, is a film that could easily stand with Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story as an
incisive portrait of family life in a particular place and time. Or a more
contemporary comparison could be made with Woody Allen’s Manhattan-centric Hannah and Her
Sisters, as it deals with the disintegration of the hopes and cultural
expectations of each family member until they are lost (and found) in a an emotional catharsis.
The matters dealt with in Singapore Dreaming are unique to its inhabitants, and there’s no
reason this work shouldn’t be held up as some sort of defining portrait of the
nation’s heart, the same way Yi Yi and A City of Sadness are for Taiwan or To Live is for China. But why was
Singapore Dreaming not screened at any of the world’s film festivals nor
reviewed by any notable critic (according to release dates and reviews on
IMDB)? I would hazard a guess that Singapore’s film community does not feel the
hunger or need to connect with international audiences, just as the magazine I
worked for saw no use going beyond its constrained borders. Singaporeans have
just become so conditioned to not being recognized that when they do produce a
great work of art, they have no network or institutional knowledge for finding
wider distribution.
Which
brings me back to why foreign media is more germane to my life. The dearth of
unfettered creative expression in Singapore has left me with little sense of
place to connect with. I feel an emotional and personal relationship with the
nation, but not an intellectual one. When I visit Borders or Kinokuniya now,
when I’m looking for some mental stimulation, I go straight for the magazines I
went for at home – The New Yorker and the political pages of
Vanity Fair foremost among them. Local media offers nothing comparable. The only magazines that
survive in this country are those dedicated to home decor, cars and fashion.
Artists and journalists raised in an environment with this superficial level of
dialogue are also likely to have nothing to say about their country -- and if
they do, they keep it to themselves, which is the same as not having an opinion
at all.
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