People vs the Ruling Class - Legal battle and beyond in Thailand

Thai politicians sure know how to enjoy the finer things in life. I’ve not been hearing much news from Thailand lately, but what I do know is that the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin, supposedly facing some trials of corruption, has simply been enjoying the victory of the Manchester football club famously owned by him, while the man currently taking his seat - Samak Sundaravej, a celebrity chef with his own cooking show - has made a friendly visit to Singapore to compare the wet market prices of prawns and tomatoes between the two countries. Fortunately, I just got to enjoy some other juicy story from a different perspective in Thailand, thanks to a little screening at the Singapore Film Festival of an independent documentary film, The Truth Be Told: The Cases Against Supinya Klangnarong. It’s about this media rights activist with a salary of 14,000 baht who was sued by Shin Corporation for libel demanding 400 million baht in compensation from her, all because she made comments to the Thai Post newspaper in 2003 that the corporation then owned by Thaksin’s family had benefited from favourable policies by his government. It’s a film with a subject matter that certainly can interest any Singaporean with some political consciousness, for obvious reasons. Incidentally, just a couple of weeks ago there was a ‘private’ screening here of Singapore political films, organised by independent journalists and activists who are mostly not new to police investigations for their civil activities. Interesting to know that even in Thailand, makers of a film like this do not live completely without fear either. 

While the filmmaker is naturally not able to immortalise the trials themselves on film, the documentary does manage to capture the tension of the three years’ legal battle by following the activist Supinya around in casual moments at home and so on, interviewing not just her but also her parents. The enemy she was fighting on the other hand was an invisible one, for she had never seen Thaksin in person and had no dealing with the Shin Corporation personally. It is a formidable battle for an ideal that her own parents and relatives as everyday people would not fully grasp; even she herself would feel torn between her ideal and the worries her parents suffer for her, a very Asian thing. She comes across as a lonely fighter in the film if not for the occasional scenes of protests and rallies conveying some sense of strength in numbers. Where is the face of justice to be found in all this? Perhaps only in the figure of Chinese folklore Justice Bao. There was a rally scene where a satire was staged in the form of Chinese opera with Justice Bao confronting a ’shameless face’ who was propagating a ‘democracy of Shin, by Shin, for Shin’. Man, that is so entertaining, Singapore political rallies in comparison must look like a, well, black-out. Miraculously, Supinya eventually survived the ordeal as the criminal court threw out the criminal lawsuit while the civil lawsuit was also withdrawn eventually. There is however a dramatic twist - for this is apparently a country that can have not just judiciary powers separate from legislative and executive, but also military powers at play independently (not to mention the monarchy). Just as the documentary was already in the editing room, the September 2006 coup took place and the film had to evolve in a different direction. Perhaps the filmmaker should even do a sequel now, as the old powers are returning to haunt. Politics in Thailand seem to be going round and round. (But then I should qualify as a Singaporean: at least it does move.)

(Below is a revisit of an old post written at the time of the Bangkok coup)

Tanks were rolled out in the streets of Bangkok on 19th September 2006. That night, as an old general was appearing on television to make a solemn announcement, those old enough to remember already had an inkling of what was in store, for it’s to be the 4th time in 20 years that this familiar face is announcing a coup d’etat in Thailand. And this would now be the 18th coup in Thai history since 1932, when a bloodless coup replaced absolute monarchy with a parliamentary government and constitutional monarchy. But if the latest coup causes any alarm at all, the Thai people seem to be losing sleep for just a night or two. In no time at all, the land of a thousand smiles is back to its normal cheery self. The only difference is they are now busy smiling into the camera with a tank in the backdrop. Parents take photos of their children in front of a tank, ladies pose next to soldiers for pictures, all eager to take away their share of the historical moment. Roses presented to soldiers, yellow ribbons tied on tank guns, all are frozen in time as they become part of harmonious compositions in colour photos.

As the coup passed the midway point of the two-week window period, some people might be getting jittery or impatient, there were protests here and there. But not to worry, the army brought in female soldiers to entertain the public. For those who can’t get enough of women with guns like Chai-Lai Angels, here are now women dancing in camouflage. Perhaps that will be a new draw for tourists being scared away by the coup. Unfortunately, from the photo alone I cannot tell if they are playing dance tunes of the north-eastern variety, I imagine that may help win over some regional support from Thaksin’s voters. A bloodless coup like this seems surreally like a calm before a storm, the news media are just watching intently for temperature rising like El Nino, and whatever spark turning into real fire that may change the perspective suddenly. Will this coup truly be a positive one, different from those before it? So far, the most remarkable difference is that the coup has been led by the Buddhist country’s first ever Muslim to be commander-in-chief, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin. Quite an interesting cultural phenomenon he is, especially if you look elsewhere in Southeast Asia these few weeks - Malaysia and Singapore, the old sparring partners they are, have just been bickering over which ethnic group has been marginalised in which country.

Western media are condemning the coup as a sign of Thailand stepping back in time. Well the West have always suffered from this burden of being the only ones in the world who actually believe in ‘democracy’. Perhaps they would believe in democractic elections even when there is obviously no fair play in the process; in fact they seem to have such faith in democractic elections, they are known to tolerate when a batch of ballot boxes go missing, and even when they resort to military means to install regime change in another country, hey, it’s all in the name of democracy. The West also have a fixed idea of mankind’s common progress in history, that is equal to democracy, equal to capitalism, equal to secularisation, equal to globalisation. One day when all countries in the world look the same, then it will be the end of history for them, like God would finally take a look at it all and be pleased with what man has done for himself. But the oriental people have a different idea of history. History is simply one dynasty rising and falling or one power giving way to another, it’s a never-ending cycle like reincarnation, all you have to answer to as an individual is your karma, for you reap what you sow. And in the Thai world view, the King is at the centre of the world much like the Mount Meru in Buddhist belief, no matter what earth-shaking news there may be, his presence makes a reassuring factor. With his blessings, life just goes on. Two weeks after the coup, the Thai people have already forgotten about the tanks and have taken their cameras instead for an exciting picnic in the ‘golden land’ - the new Suvarnabhumi Airport. Meanwhile, more than 100 members of the Thai Ruk Thai have quit the party, but not a sign of their infidelity they say, it is rather to prevent the party from being banned, so it is all out of love for the party. Well the past is best forgotten now, nothing more to talk about. Anyway a friend working in a human rights organisation in Bangkok just told me, in times like this, the policy is to keep mum.

Anybody still remembers the last coup in 1991? Man, that’s like such a long time ago, MTV’s current femme fatale Tata Young was so young then, she was only 11 and only qualified for children’s singing contests, yet to launch her career as a teenage pop singer with a mushroom hairstyle, and certainly a far cry from her new ’sexy, naughty, bitchy’ image singing English songs. But maybe things don’t change so much in Thailand within 15 years. OK, the Bangkok metro system is finally up after the long wait. But if I’m not wrong, bus fares have remained the same all this while (hard to imagine for people living in a place like Singapore with constant price hikes). What else? Bird Thongchai is still the number one superstar, while countless teenage idols have come and gone. Many a politician have also come and gone. So how will someone like Thaksin be judged 10 or 15 years from now? Let the historians be the judge. Perhaps he will best be remembered for the death toll of 2,200 in a war against drugs and 1,700 in a war against insurgency in southern Thailand. It may also depend on whether future leaders will have as much business acumen to run the country’s economy (and his own family’s enterprise too, in this case). But perhaps as the new interim prime minister says, Thailand will find its own form of happiness not measured by GDP - the popular benchmark all over the world? Or perhaps real life has to be some form of compromise, like the new Suvarnabhumi Airport (oh poor Thaksin, he didn’t manage to take off from the swamp that he was turning into a symbol of his glory). Designed by Chicago-based architect Helmut Jahn, it is cold and modern on the exterior with a shell of glass, steel and concrete, but when you get to the inside, it is a showcase of Thai art works, all there for a sense of identity.

 

From “The Art of Corruption” art exhibition held at the TPI Building in Bangkok from Dec 2007 to Jan 2008. Sutee Kunavichayanont’s installation Great Cheat Great Cheat: Children of “Srithanonchai” is a room filled with many typical Thai-style writing canvasses covered with words conveying corruption.

Hong Kong Sex Photos in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Like virginity, innocence once lost can never be recovered. This was an overpowering sentiment that came across in Lee Ang’s erotic espionage movie Lust, Caution, which was the hot talking point in the Chinese-speaking world just a few months ago, thanks to the very vivid and elaborate sex scenes between Tony Leung and Tang Wei. Tourists from China were flooding cinemas in Hong Kong just to see the uncensored version. But the sensation caused by that movie has since paled in comparison to the sex photos leaked out of singer and actor Edison Chen and his string of celebrity partners in bed. The questions “did they do it for real” or “are the pictures doctored” were very soon replaced by the question “which actress is next in action?”. Not only did star gazing and porn surfing become one and the same for the first time in Chinese entertainment history, the daily fresh reports that fed the public’s obsession with these very private realms of the stars were resembling a long and drawn-out soap opera - a very star-studded series in this case, and a soap opera of very dirty linen.

With the sex photos spreading like fire in the internet, this has become a disaster on a national scale for the moral police. Hong Kong police was left helpless before data transfer in the information superhighway (as some tabloid put it, the police went simply ‘mo fu’  - there is no magic charm against the evil of unidentified netizens with a resource of these photos, who might possibly be extorting the parties concerned). Police commissioners were also inconsistent on the legal issues in the face of this unprecedented media scandal, saying at one point that anyone with those pictures on their computer could be in breach of the law, only to clarify later that it was not a crime to transfer the pictures to friends, which then prompted sending of picture files en masse between ‘friends’. And soon In mainland China, CDs of the pictures were even illegally manufactured and sold in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, sellers apparently enjoying brisk sales from school kids among other customers. It is not merely the career or marriage of some Hong Kong actresses at stake in this scandal. Life will simply never be the same again for the young generations of media consumers in Hong Kong and China as the many-splendoured world of their pop culture idols is suddenly reduced to some pornographic close-ups.

It is not that the Chinese society has been the most prudish in the world. I just snort when I see how western reports play up the news story by describing sex as a ‘taboo’ in Chinese society until now, as if the world’s most populous country has been reproducing by means of test tubes in the last 5,000 years. Come on, it’s 4 centuries ago that China produced the classic novel Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase), an erotic story sexually explicit past the point of being instructive. And now Chinese celebrities are proving they can outdo Paris Hilton. There is certainly a kind of decorum in Chinese culture of course, which can be summarised in some old Chinese wisdom which would go: there are things you can speak of but not do, and there are things you can do but not speak of. The unsaid Asian wisdom however remains that if it is an indecent act by your neighbour, by all means talk about it. Hence the ‘paradox’ of how tabloids and gossip magazines in Hong Kong were splashing lurid photos of this scandal all over the place; makes you wonder how many of them should be fined under the Obscenity Act if is seriously enforced. Actually, the entertainment magazines in Hong Kong have long been notorious for planting spy cameras, to catch celebrities smooching in cars or even changing backstage. What stands out in the typical Chinese reaction towards this scandal is not merely the moralising but the way the public relishes prying into the sex lives of these celebrities in the process of moralising. There is simply no concept of privacy in our moralistic Asian society. In fact the way that the Chinese media has been reporting this scandal, despite all posturing of moralising, is not far removed from the reactions of any male net surfer checking out Edison Chen’s photo documentation of his exploits - first he goes: “filthy sluts!”; then he adds: “lucky bastard!”.

There is a Chinese saying that goes something like this: a wife is not as greal as a concubine, a concubine not as great as going to a brothel, going to a brothel not as great as committing adultery. Now I don’t mean to make any moral judgement here about sexual promiscuity. But it should be fair to say that this Edison Chen is quite plaintly a pervert, for the sheer amount of pornography he has produced. (Call it male instinct, right from day one I thought there is something spooky and loathsome in him, which made him perfect for the role of a triad member sneaking into the police force in Infernal Affairs II; but female fans would not listen.) Just as 1,300 sex photos leaked out from his pink laptop seem staggering enough, police investigation reveals that he has in fact several times of that to his name, involving a couple dozen women. Now photographing or filming your wife or girlfriend to heighten sexual pleasures is one thing. But to take pictures systemically of naked women spreading their legs or performing oral sex on you suggests an irksome egomania, not to mention a compulsive obsession with the genitals. Furthermore, such obsesssive documentation of sex is in fact taking over the sexual act itself in importance. It has gone beyond a documentation of two persons in the heat of passion. A pervert like this is not so much seeking satisfaction from the physical intimacy as seeking psychological satisfaction from the very thought of violating a woman’s body, which is why documentation is essential to him, serving as proof of the violation. Such behaviour is akin to a dog’s territorial pissing, a tourist vandalising walls of a scenic site just to say “I was here”, and a savage severing the scalp or whatever body part of his enemy as proof of his conquest.

Needless to say, such photos represent the male gaze on the woman as a sexual object or instrument. The camera becomes the most powerful weapon in the hand of a man who is shooting his willing victims one by one, like murder by numbers. There has long been a perfect allegory for this in the 1960 movie Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, whereby the serial killer literally kills with his camera. Of course, in this case what Edison Chen is helping to kill indirectly would be the career or marriage of his past partners in bed. Perhaps in each of these cases, the actress or whoever was having fun play-acting to the male fantasy, presuming that it would all remain within the privacy of bedroom walls and hard disc memory. What they forget to their own detriment is that photography has the power of immortalising a single act, making it larger than life and impossible to erase from public memory. That aside, what Edison Chen has helped to kill is the erotic fantasy of many male fans over the likes of Cecilia Cheung and Gillian Chung. You may think surely the reverse is true? Well granted, a woman fully clothed is not as sexy as a woman dressed in a revealing dress. Imagine a woman dressed fully in a formal outfit, say a police uniform, that would hardly be enticing. But say she slowly unbuttons to show some skin beneath the formal outfit, and even strips to show some lacy undergarments. That would be exciting, wouldn’t it? But say she strips down to the nude before you can say: wait a minute, slow it down. Suddenly we remember the good old wisdom: Less is more! Men like women to yield to their desires, but hey, they also need space to give a free rein to their power of imagination - allow us to first do some mental undressing of the desired woman! The chase is part of the fun. Georges Bataille summarised it best when he talked about women as objects for the aggressive desire of men: “In so far as she is attractive, a woman is a prey to men’s desire. Unless she refuses completely because she is determined to remain chaste, the question is at what price and under what circumstances will she yield. … Putting oneself forward is the fundamental feminine attitude, but that first movement is followed by a feigned denial.” Initial refusal only enhances the value of a woman as object, whereas the minute she gives herself freely, game is over. That is also why something like the schoolgirl image of Gillian Chung in the duo Twins was so popular; it is a cultivated image of a virginal young lady, yet to be corrupted, a perfect object for the male fantasy. Not surprisingly, when she first apologised in the wake of the scandal, she simply claimed that her sexual involvement was due to her being ’silly’ and ‘naive’ - what a calculated ‘turn-on’, these are clearly two desirable qualities in a girl that avail herself for manipulation by men, not least sexual. Unfortunately, not many seem to buy that. The fact remains that whereas men who are playboys in our society are all the more revered for their virility, women who have fallen are simply spoilt goods. In show business, men can be anything any time, but women are best marketed either as sweet and innocent young things or seasoned erotic symbols, the role is sealed with the image.  Bataille said that “prostitution is the logical consequence of the feminine attitude”, I guess men like the filthy sluts, but we also need the comfort of women who are exclusive products, or at least yielding only at much higher price.

The devaluation of Hong Kong celebrities now can also be understood by borrowing the word ‘aura’ from Walter Benjamin (Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit). Until now, the constant spying on celebrities by Hong Kong magazines had served to create an impression that these stars are elusive - in physical appearance, that is, while the magazines are able to reveal all trivialities of their personal lives so much so that readers begin to feel they have the right to know everything. Such spying (and the celebrities’ hiding) helps to whet our appetite for we tend to think the celebrities must be good-looking cos they are so hard to see, as the song goes. But just like a Britney Spears upskirt, suddenly fans are given far more than what they asked for. Suddenly even the celebrities’ most private realm of the senses has turned into images as good as commonplace property of every household. Such indecent exposure has now led to a loss of ‘aura’ which the celebrities have hitherto enjoyed from carefully laboured public relation exercises of photo shoots for magazine covers with the best angles and best lighting, as impressions of the stars are now stripped down to numerous images of raw sex which go through no quality control and are circulated endlessly to infinity. As Benjamin said of the effects of photographic reproductions: “By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.” Suddenly it strikes viewers, after satisfying their curiosity, that the physical bodies of the celebrities are really nothing that special, which we ought to know in the first place since the faces are what make celebrities unique. The breaking of moral taboo on display of sex in this case also marks the passing of an age of innocence, just about as revolutionary as the secularisation of religious cult images which Benjamin described: “Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. … Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round, certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level.” The exhibition value of photography quickly displaces its cult or personal, sentimental value. In this case, it is the sanctity of sex which some people like to guard with religious fervour, even in a secular society like the Chinese which has never been ruled by a church with a concept of original sin.

Frankly, one would not get so excited about the whole thing at all if one is not remotely a fan of Chinese entertainment. Hong Kong media continues relentlessly to chronicle the Edison Chen saga like scavengers (the latest episode centering on the identity of 8 women from affluent families, published in the magazines with photo silouettes and nicknames). The western media has generally been less than excited about this case, partly because Asian eroticism without any white player is of little interest, sex in the middle kingdom would be as alien as sex in the animal kingdom to them; anyway the concern in respectable media of the western world would be over invasion of personal privacy rather than public moralising. That said, it is fun to compare how different European media report the Edison Chen scandal differently. Le Monde, being French, simply relishes the potent mix of glamour and dirt as entertaining news, especially with rumours of extortion and celebrities’ mafia links: “Sexe, célébrités, mafia… les ingrédients sont dignes d’un thriller, le casting, lui, est prestigieux”. Der Spiegel, being German, immediately politicises the whole issue with a macro-social perspective, before falling into essentialist philosophy - first it describes the Chinese authorities as desperately fighting western influence and internet technology which defy traditional taboos on sex, and then it speculates if Edison Chen has deliberately started the whole thing himself as a publicity stunt. (Oh well, we should see it coming, Karl Marx with his great historical dialectism was born of German soil; it’s also typical of the general western view of the Asian society as backwards - yet to democratise, yet to secularise, yet to liberalise, all state-controlled and hence devoid of any capacity to think and behave as individuals unless western influence comes to the rescue.) The article seems just short of proclaiming Edison Chen a hero or martyr in a country which happens to forbid pornography by law even in this day and age.

It has been commented that China generally exercises more censorship over political content in the internet than sexual. While Cecilia Cheung’s commercial for a feminine cleansing product (which seemed a nicely timed self-mockery) was pulled in China possibly due to dispute on medical claims rather than her sex photos scandal, there has been a blatant ban in Chinese television not only on a skincare commercial by actress Tang Wei but any video of her. It is not just for her sex scenes in Lust, Caution though; the criticism seems to be that her character in the movie “glorifies traitors” and “insults patriots”. (Never mind the original story by Zhang Ailing was written half a century ago; and actor Tony Leung being a man and so well established is simply spared.) There is in fact a new directive on film licensing and censorship announced by China’s broadcasting bureau in early March stating that movies should give priority to “healthy development of the young and social effectiveness”. One can only speculate as to how much of this has been inspired by the Hong Kong sex photos scandal. But certainly even during the Chinese New Year period, it was noted with disgust that media attention on news of Edison Chen’s scandal was rivalling public concern over the winter disaster in China - which had left thousands freezing with water and electricity supply cut off, and prevented many from returning home for the reunion dinner, the most important annual ritual in Chinese culture. (Members of the public who condemn those involved in the sex scandal get so emotional that in Hong Kong, even Gillian Chung’s appearance in a charity concert for the winter disaster was met with protests from the audience; they have simply no forgiveness for such ’sinners’.)

But the conservative and the socially conscious in China should take comfort in the knowledge that people still have other things to talk about than the sex life of celebrities. Like how some would point out in Chinese internet forums, why should we worry so much about the lives of these rich movie stars who still can afford to ‘burn’ dollar bills? One unlikely entertainment star who has been the talk of the town in China’s web sites during the Spring Festival was Zhao Benshan, a farmer turned comedian who has appeared for about two decades without fail every year in Beijing’s CCTV Spring Festival special, playing the role of an old farmer. While some would now criticise him for being an outdated cliche no longer representative of rural folks of China today, others still praise for his satire of modern life in China, saying he has a thing or two to teach movie director Zhang Yimou (currently busy preparing for the Olympics ceremony), who has been indulging in fetish of martial arts chinoiserie these days and dreaming only of winning an Oscar from across the Pacific, no longer relevant to real life in China. Zhao incidentally is also a performer in the folk art of song and dance known as er ren zhuan, arguably an intangible cultural heritage. Personally, I find it so nice to know that there is a huge population of simple folks who may still enjoy rustic and old-fashioned entertainment despite how the world has changed.   

Not that China does not have its own unique form of obscenity. In Chongqing city or municipality, there is a man who shares the same first and last Chinese names with Edison Chen. It is purely a coincidence from the world’s fastest growing urban centre, with a population of 31 million, and the poor man has been so harassed by people poking fun at him that he must be hating the name given by his parents. Anyone, this is a megalopolis which has recently boasted new luxurious villas at the hefty price of 50 million yuan each, and it may just enter the Guiness book of records soon with a new public toilet of capacity for 1,000 people at one time. Not only does the concept go against the logic of usage (why would people want to converge from far away to do their business en masse?), its design is in a style shamelessly stolen from Gaudi’s Parc Guell in Barcelona. It’s amazing the kind of strange vision some people produce by way of making a name for themselves.

Meantime Edison Chen has made a public apology over the incident and withdrawn from the Hong Kong entertainment industry indefinitely. It is a necessary gesture in respectable Chinese society to give a nod to morality even as the floodgates of internet and other media cannot be retracted, and the images will take a long time to fade from public memory. (Tabloids also say that his apology was timed with a holy day of a white dragon temple in Thailand, probably to save himself from people who want his blood.)  Chen may yet have hope of finding a new career in Hollywood with his role in the Batman movie filmed in Hong Kong, but the careers of ladies associated with him are apparently going down the john, and he will get no thanks for making this special administrative region of China look sexier than Gotham City.

Our creative colonial cousins

Known for his extensive study on cultural creativity in the world’s great cities, British urban planner Peter Hall said that “the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities, for all their evident disadvantages and obvious problems, have throughout history been the places that ignited the sacred flame of the human intelligence and the human imagination”. According to his book Cities in Civilisation: Culture, Technology and Urban Order, cultural creativity is observed to take place in urban environments characterised by accumulated wealth, social tensions and the presence of outsiders. Which to me begs the question: why is it that despite all the wealth that Singapore boasts of which has resulted in a world-class theatre and all, despite all its efforts in attracting foreign talents, does it seem that it is our poorer neighbour Malaysia which is actually ahead in creative and adventurous film-making?

I’m not talking about a spectacular epic like Puteri Gunung Ledang (it would be unfair since the only legendary figure Singapore has is Prince Sang Nila Utama, all for spotting a lion in the jungle, and there is even doubt if it was indeed a lion; and it has no hero to talk about since Lim Bo Seng during World War II, nobody poltically correct anyway). I’m talking about film makers like Yasmin Ahmad (her groundbreaking work Sepet just happened to be shown on TV last week during Chinese New Year) and Amir Muhammad (more on him later) who have challenged censors with their social or political commentary. I’m thinking also partly about the 2005 Malaysian movie The Third Generation which I stumbled upon by rare luck in a video shop here, a Cantonese movie with impressive cinematography (if a little overdone) in the Raise-the-Red-Lantern school of oriental beauty, that makes Penang look just about as sexy as Shanghai. Perhaps the Malaysian cities we like to think of as lagging behind Singapore by a couple of decades have actually managed to preserve some old Chinese architecture that affords a cinematic panorama? It is interesting, as Singapore cinemas are now selling a local Chinese slapstick comedy which indulges in fun with the Malaysian Chinese accent, to note that Malaysia has long taken its Cantonese dialect thus to film festivals in Cannes, Shanghai and Hawaii. That was even before Singapore’s most prominent movie director made box office records with a campy Hokkien musical!

While Singaporean directors tend to grab attention through romanticising of juvenile gangs or florid depictions of red-light districts or other forms of sensationalisation, Malaysia’s famous directors prefer to keep it real, bringing potentially explosive stories of social and ethnic tension down to the street level of everyday people. In Sepet for instance, the girl Orked has an open argument with a Malay school mate on interracial romance, and meanwhile in a Chinese coffeeshop, her Chinese boyfriend Jason is facing similar reactions from a pal who advises him against the relationship, saying it’s troublesome to convert and he wouldn’t be able to eat char siew again. (It’s funny how the Chinese fear of other cultures is often linked to food; incidentally, in a racist and/or plain stupid entry in youtube, two Chinese Singaporeans have tried to poke fun at an Indian Muslim hawker by asking for bak kut teh.) Reference is also made in the movie Sepet of the bumiputra policy in Malaysia: whereas Orked who has scored 5 A’s is awarded a scholarship, Jason who has scored 7 A’s is just out in the streets making a hard living. It’s such a pertinent movie; if there is anything I can complain about, it’s just that the movie is so manja at first and then so sedih in the end. Yasmin Ahmad (who has gone beyond garnering international awards and is currently on the jury of the Berlin Film Festival) (link: http://yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com/ ) has made not just one movie but an entire trilogy out of the Orked story, including Gubra which is partly about a Muslim cleric who has prostitutes for neighbours. You can make a big fuss about the scene of him caressing a street dog, but as I’m trying to say, it’s all about human beings in daily lives. Making everything seem natural and casual without being judgmental is this director’s greatest strength. It’s like how Jason’s brother says about his divorced wife, just in passing: serve me right for marrying a Singaporean. It’s meant to draw a smile rather than provoke head on.

Perhaps Singaporeans are so stifled in their creativity and unable to portray real people because they just can’t get out of their shells. Singapore film makers are not so adept in reflecting on intercultural situations, they tend to do only cardboard representations of multiculturalism, echoing the typical government propaganda that is best manifested in a kitschy Chingay parade. No wonder another urban theorist, Charles Landry, author of The Art of City Making, concluded on the place: “The notion of a creative city implies a level of openness that potentially threatens Singapore’s traditions of more top-down action.” He said: “Singapore’s strengths embody its weaknesses. It is better at creating the containers than the contents, the hardware rather than the software”. Perhaps constraint is something which has been internalised by Singaporeans; in a city which has a fixation for clean toilets, everybody becomes constipated with an anal personality.

Anyway, below is an old review of mine on the film The Last Communist, which I really enjoyed as a wonderful portrayal of multiculturalism in the Malaysian peninsula, not to mention the director’s courage in dealing with such a politically sensitive figure of the last century. If anybody in Singapore attempts to make something along the same line, somebody will make sure he gets his head checked. (I’m not saying there is no effort at all among local film makers in tracing Singapore’s history, but it tells you something when the one notable title is, aptly, Invisible City.)

Saw The Last Communist at the cinema that day, Lelaki Comunis Terakhir, the Malaysian film directed by Amir Muhammad revolving around the legendary Chin Peng, who joined the Communist Party of Malaya at barely 16 and became its leader at age 23, henceforth public enemy number one for the British forces in Malaysia. The film features interviews with former CPM members now living in the Peace Village in Thailand following the 1989 peace settlement, mostly rather old by now (Chin Peng himself, who never appears in the film, is already 82). But that is only towards the end of the film. The film traces the life and legacy of Chin Peng, starting from his birth in Sitiawan, Perak where his father ran a bicycle shop. He grew up in a colonial society whereby the Asians were segregated from the Europeans. He refused to study in a Christian missionary school and enjoyed playing with his friends near a mosque. But such facts about Chin Peng’s life are juxtaposed throughout the film with depictions of ordinary folks in present-day life and culture in Perak, in an often light-hearted manner. There are even musical interludes now and then, with hilarious songs spoofing national propaganda as a way of telling the history of communism and colonial rule in Malaysia. One just has to watch it to see how fantastic the film is, really bagus! Unfortunately there is only one screening per day, scheduled at odd timings like one hour before midnight, as if to deter all but the die-hard viewers. Still I count myself lucky to be able to see the film since it has now been banned in Malaysia; understandably such media portrayal of the communist party remains a taboo in Malaysia, much like how a film about the opposition parties would get Singapore authorities taking action in panic.

Much of this offbeat documentary film in fact consists of interviews with ordinary people in Malaysia of different trades today, so much so that you tend to forget at which point in time the focus of the film actually moves from the hometown of Chin Peng to the resistance against Japanese occupation and then the emergency period under the British, and you begin to wonder if the film is about Malaysia’s economy or Malaysian food culture. You hear Chinese fruit sellers in Ipoh talking about pomelos - how the Chinese like it sweet while Europeans like it sour; you hear Indian peddlers in Bidor talking about the variety of petai beans - how Chinese like ‘rice’ petai, malays like ‘wood’ petai and Indians like ‘nut’ petai. Then somebody in Taiping would tell the story about the origin of their popular flower bun. Apparently there was a man who joined the resistance force against the Japanese during the war and was captured and given the Japanese torture, like forcing water down one’s throat and then hitting the bloated stomach. Meanwhile his mother started going to a temple to pray to a Chinese goddess for her son, and he started dreaming that a fairy was feeding him with lotus and somehow he survived the ordeal. Since then his mother started worshipping at the temple offering lotus flowers. After the war he went underground again, this time as guerilla against the British, and was never heard of again. But his mother kept offering lotus flowers in prayer and as they became hard to come by, she started replacing them with pink-coloured buns with a white pattern of 6 petals on top. This soon became a specialty of Taiping popular all over Malaysia.

And then you would hear a mock patriotic song about Malaysia being the top exporter of tin and tyres in the world. The singer is a fat lady with big curly hair, posing by a stream in a valley. As the camera tilts around her in different angles, she would sing about the industry set up by Malaysia’s colonisers, how whenever the world needs its supply of tin and rubber, Malaysia is willing (Malaysia rela…). There is an interview with an owner of a charcoal factory, who proudly shows how charcoal is produced there and adds that the Japanese are major buyers. You hear rubber plantation workers saying they are too young to remember the second world war, and talking about their hopes and dreams for their children. You also see some tunnels that have been used as hideouts for the communist soldiers, where tin ore can be found. And there is a song about identity cards being issued during the emergency period. The fat lady would ride a bicycle around town, singing about how important ICs are (IC, penting!). The ICs helped the British to contain communist influence; the British also guarded people in racially segregated villages, to prevent them from supplying communist soldiers with food and medicine. There is an interview with a man who has betrayed his communist uncle and cousin to the British for a sum of RM1,000, big money at the time as the starting pay for a teacher then was just RM62.

The film portrays the 1957 negotiation between Tungku Abdul Rahman and Chin Peng through caricatures. Actually colonialism was already getting out of fashion and expensive for the British by then and Malaysia’s independence was in sight, the communists were about to lose their major mission. But the only option offered to Chin Peng and his forces was to surrender and renounce the communist ideology. Chin Peng refused and said there was no true independence if the British military bases remained in Malaya. The CPM forces hence persisted for the next few decades, though they took more of a defensive position instead.

It is in the final segment of the film that it turns to the ex-soldiers of CPM who now live in the Peace Villages in Thailand, especially since applications to return to Malaysia have been rejected. Among them are men who are maimed, who have a right hand gone or a left leg lost to landmine. They can only spend time now singing karaoke of patriotic songs, recalling 30 or 40 years of their lives given to an ideology as memories of glory. Some of them concede they have committed mistakes in their time, causing inconvenience and distress to civilians, but basically they have no regrets for the lives they have chosen. Unfortunately the film director has not been able to interview Malay communists who occupy two of the Peace Villages, due to current unrest in southern Thailand.

After watching the movie that night, there were no more buses and I had to take a cab home, with the extra midnight charges. A very small price to pay of course for such excellent efforts of a film. Pity not many people here will spare 90 minutes of their time for a movie like this. Something like this will never make the big headlines here, unlike news this week such as a Singapore actress making it to the Desperate Housewives television series in America, or the opening of the new X-men movie; apparently the job of saving the world should only be left to some mutants in an imaginary future. I suppose 2,000 people holding out for 30 or 40 years in the jungle is already a miracle. Imagine living without proper shelter, enduring worn-out garments and broken shoes, just hanging on to the belief that you are doing something worthwhile. They are like a miracle generation now gone by; for who even dreams of miracles these days?

End of this repeat broadcast. By the way Amir Muhammad (link: http://amirmu.blogspot.com/)  also made a sequel that was also banned, Village People Radio Show (Apa Khabar Orang Kampung)  about Malay former communists living in exile in southern Thailand. I must clarify that I’m not voicing support for communism here, what interests me is the multi-faceted Asian identity in this region. In fact I would like to cite a quote by one Tom Nairn who wrote: “The theory of nationalism represents Marxism’s great historical failure. But … [it] would be more exact to say that nationalism has proved an uncomfortable anomaly for Marxist theory”. I read it in an essay that also noted “the fact that since World War II every successful revolution has defined itself in national terms”, like China, Vietnam and so on; written by Benedict Anderson, the essay is entitled Imagined Communities: Nationalism’s cultural roots, and it talks about how language has created the possibility of imagined communities and set the stage for the modern nation. Tak faham? Well, never mind, such long stories.

Welcome to Singapore. Nothing you see is real.

Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten. - Walter Ulbricht

Nobody has the intention to build a wall. These were the famous words from the Chairman of the GDR State Council in 1961, just two months before the Berlin Wall came into being. Time marches on. Since Germany’s reunification in 1989,  the most shameless walls in the world are now those built to hem in Palestinians (of which one was partly broken down dramatically last week between Gaza and Egypt). We are of course dealing here with a nation that indirectly resulted from Nazi Germany’s persecutions, that interestingly, has adopted a similar approach as the Nazis with ideals of a nationality based on pure ethnicity. It has inspired British graffiti artist Banksy to spray-paint art works on the West Bank barriers in 2005, defying Israeli gunpoints, including an image of children trying to dig a way out; recently, he has also done similar works in Bethlehem.

But let’s turn away from such heavy stuff and cut to some comic relief in a sunny little island nation at the tip of the Malaysian peninsular. There I was sitting on a bus the other day when images of some fragments of the Berlin Wall came on the mobile television. It’s a feature on an infotainment programme about 4 panels of the Berlin Wall being donated to Singapore, to be placed at a reservoir park. They are to stand as an ‘ode to freedom’, the report said. I was so bemused and amused that I immediately messaged a friend and we started discussing what the hell that should mean - is Singapore being commended for its efforts in fighting against communism all these years, or is it for the sheer quantity of ‘freedom fries’ consumed here?

Now the Berlin Wall has long been torn apart for traffic instead of standing substantially as an exemplary instance of architectural conservation. If you ask an East German, you will be told that all the kitschy appeal of the Berlin Wall today (not to mention the over-dramatised tourist trap called Checkpoint Charlie) represent basically perspectives of the West Germans because people in the GDR never had the luxury of beautifying the walls. Anyway, among sections of the Berlin Wall which have exchanged hands in the international market, four panels painted with figures dubbed ‘kings of freedom’ are destined to be part of some recreational area in Singapore. On this topic, the foreign minister even went on that infotainment programme to be interviewed by a comedian who is like Singapore’s very own Priscilla Queen of the Desert, in a rather embarassingly minute of airtime. Incidentally, one of the other show hosts of this same programme is a former beauty-queen-turned-nominated-MP, the term NMP referring to something invented by the Singapore government years ago to convince its people that they don’t need to elect opposition party members into the Parliament, since the the ruling party can pick other people to do the job of giving alternative voices. So you get an idea of how fuzzy the line is between Singapore politics and show business? Here is more: the ruling PAP actually made some of its MPs in their 30s attend hip hop dance classes to perform a minute at last year’s Chinese New Year parade, in order to demonstrate it has some young blood, for voters who are suckers for that presumably. And just two months ago, the CEO and staff of Singapore’s Media Development Authority went on youtube and made it to top 20 of The Guardian’s Viral Video Chart with what is aptly described as a ‘completely cringe-worthy rap video’, with lines like “Nothing but the best service for our customers/Fees and fines we make it a lot easier”. But just in case you are seriously impressed by the Singapore government’s new-found sense of humour, think again. Just over last weekend, an Asian premiere of a show at the Singapore Fringe Festival ‘08 called The Complaints Choir Project, originally promising to let Singaporean weave their complaints into songs with foreign performers, was cancelled due to licensing problem. It had to be turned into a private event due to some regulation similar to that for Singapore Speaker’s Corner, which requires registration and does not allow non-Singaporeans to perform. 

It is interesting to think about those walls which will be standing in the middle of nowhere in some corner of Singapore. On which side should you find freedom? Singapore’s political history in the Cold War years have curiously been something like a mirror image of the GDR. The witchhunt here was for communists among the Chinese-educated, students and teachers alike, during the 60s and 70s. Even a prominent editor of a Chinese newspaper would be jailed and never heard of again. (All newspapers in Singapore soon became merged under one corporation, the easier to monitor.) The founder of Nanyang University, a Chinese university built by means of donations from people literally of all walks of life - notably trishaw riders, was robbed of his citizenship, and the university became downgraded into a technological institute. (This was just before China opened up its economy and the Chinese language began to become lucrative.) And Singapore held one of the longest-serving political prisoners in the world, one Chia Thye Poh who was detained without trial under the Internal Security Act, the gist of it being that he refused to confess to being a communist. He was imprisoned for 23 years, followed by 9 years of house arrest. It seems Helmut Kohl played some part in Singapore softening the stance towards him, and perhaps it was when Nelson Mandela visited Singapore that the country realised there is one world record it does not want to be known for.

By the way, unauthorised graffiti is against the law in Singapore. (Just recently, an arts school here expelled a student who attempted graffiti art on the spanking new walls of the campus.) Its Vandalism Act was originally passed in 1966 to curb the spread of communist graffiti, but what everybody would remember is of course the American youth who was caned here, despite Clinton’s clemecy appeal, for spray-paint vandalism. Well Singapore may be one country that would gladly support the fight against Al-Qaida and the Taliban, but its does share with Middle Eastern countries a culture of punishment by flogging. Call it the art of a fine balance, just like the way Singapore embraces capitalism while extolling Asian values in rejection of western-style democracy. Singapore has a Speakers’ Corner, it is just that no demonstration is allowed. And it does not always ban foreign magazines critical of its government, sometimes it only limits their circulation. Of course there are also cases like Financial Times which was sued last year for alleging nepotism in Singapore. That is not so harsh considering that the most hardcore politicians of opposition parties here have been sued to bankruptcy or have fled the country. I think I should have nothing more to say about the dynasty of rule which has been in place for close to half a century here. Singapore has long been under the shadow of one who belongs to the same generation of pro-Western Asian leaders as Indonesia’s Suharto who just passed away, but people would say that it is a country that works well. You can’t say there is no graffiti here at all; the authorities will not let you say that, because they can show you it does exist in designated areas.

Well, we can rest assured that there will be no boring art in the social-realism style of GDR on Singapore’s own Berlin Wall panels; those Chinese artists doing social realism paintings or leftist woodcuts in Singapore in the past would remain lying low today if they are still alive. Always trust that the government knows how to stake its money on giving the city an aesthetic beauty. This is after all a government which has announced some years ago that it has very concrete plans to allow its people to have ’spontaneous fun’. If it is importing a piece of freedom now from abroad, you best believe it will look better than the real thing.

Further reading: Disneyland With the Death Penalty, by William Gibson.