self-censorship - singapore's shame

'to promote film as an artistic medium. to provide the opportunity to audiences to view films not otherwise released commercially. to create awareness of the finer points of filmmaking through seminars and workshops by overseas professionals, to pave the way for a Singapore film industry and to provide an international showcase for Asian Cinema'

that, was what the annual singapore international film festival (SIFF) promised...on its website at least.

a singaporean film maker, Martyn See was pressured to remove his documentary on opposition leader, dr chee soon juan entitled 'Singapore Rebel' from the ongoing SIFF after being warned of possible criminal charges. a full chronicle of the chain of events that led to his withdrawal could be found on his blog.

under the 1998 amendment to the Film Act (an attempt widely believed to be prompted by an attempt by the SDP to release a party videotape to the public), any person who imports, makes, reproduces, distributes or exhibitis a 'party political film' could be fined up to $100,000 or jailed for up to two years. and with the usual ambiguity that typicalises singaporean media law, 'party political films' are defined in the Act to include any motion picture 'which is made by any person and directed towards any political ends in singapore'. the controversial amendment was passed with strong criticisms and with reservations from PAP MPs, NMPs, and opposition MPs alike. while the amendment was perceived by many to be yet another move to stifle politcal opposition towards the government, the Act appears to limit and stifle creative efforts in the arts scene more than it does to opposition politicians (not that it will make a difference since they are already inherently marginalised anyway, with or without the film act given the long list of other legislations such as internet regulation over politic websites, and politcal donations that disfavours them disproportionately). Martyn See was one such casualty, an artist caught in a political crossfire.

the ostensible reason for the amendment was that videos were an undesirable medium for political discourse in that it tended to promote image over substance. it is to be fair, not without justification as seen in the debacle and outrage over the 'Special Report' satirical VCD in circulation during the last taiwanese presidential elections. yet it question the neccessity of a blanket ban on any movies vaguely deemed political since there are already libel and slander laws (which our PAP government certainly uses to great effect)in place to take care of any baseless accusations or ill-founded political mudslinging. so why the need to incur a social cost at the expense of stifling our budding film-makers? isn't the promotion of local arts (among other realpolitik concerns) on the government's agenda as well?

the greater overaching concerns beyond that of politcal discourse for such vaguely defined legislations is the self-censoring culture it breeds in our local artists or even audience. the ambiguous nature of what is or isn't acceptable to the government or OB markers (which to my knowledge is just one of those catchy fanciful terms like 'heartlander' which were never empirically defined) gives rise to what is considered 'drifnet laws' - legislations that allow the government to trawl a whole ocean of eventualities, and throw back whatever it was not interested in. in the face of the possiblity of punity, and given an ill-understanding of what is or isn't acceptable (given the ambiguity), artists or bureaucrats on the censorship board are more prone to erring on the safe side, and actively choosing to prevent the publicising of certain controversial art works out of fear of persecution prosecution - even if what they chose to censor turns out to be what the government is uninterested in out of the whole 'ocean of eventualities'.

the singapore board of film censors (or censorship board, abbrieviated as CB as i would like to call it) has a greater role beyond that of a nanny shielding the eyelids of we the young, innocent, virginal impressionable singaporeans. the CB has a 'maternal' role in determining the social acceptability for various forms of mainstream or even fringe arts. it takes one brave censor who dare to test the boundaries of social acceptability and take that risk in passing a controversial artwork before society and progress to a further level of artistic progression. if censors (films or otherwise) chose to seek the easy way out, erring on the safe side, the world would probably be devoid of classics like lady chatterly's lover, and perhaps a whole subsequent generation of brilliant but controversial films like trainspotting which rode on that very precedent platform. sadly, our singaporean CB chose the easy way out. i'm not too sure if the CB is a governmental, quasi-governmental or fully independent. but from what i gathered from the correspondenc on martyn see's blog, the MHA was never involved but rather the decision was made by the CB itself.it is indeed ironic, and lamentably that the while controversial foreign films are passed, local film-makers are denied a platform in what is designed to be a show case of the singapore cinema. shame on you, CB. and to think our budding film-makers are receiving accolates around the world, but their homeland where they aren't even allowed to showcase their works, not even because of governmental clampdown, but simply out of bureaucratic cowardice of the CB. do we have to deny an entire generation of martyn sees or royston tans before the CB sees the light beyond the tunnel (that was a lousy pun)? singapore already has a bad reputation in terms of press freedom having being ranked 147th in the 2004 world press freedom ranking - barely 3 notches ahead of the military regime in pakistan, the last thing we need is a stiffling, prudish and dogmatic arts scene to match that notoriety.

dear blogders, if you're as peeved as i am, show your outrage to our singaporean CB (an abbreviation which somehow shares the same initials as the hokkien name of a certain part of the female anatomy). inspired by the 'i'm-too-sexy-for-my-blog' movement, why not let's have a 'dun-let-the-CB-cover-my-eyes' movement to show solidarity for local film-maker. well, to be realistic, it's not like the singapore board of film censors (CB) would give a hoot about that, but at least we could express some sort of collective outcry towards this bureaucratic cowardice.


dun let the CB cover my eyes!

simply take a photograph of yourself, form an oval shape using ur middle and fore-finger on one hand, and point a middle finger at the oval while giving an expression of disapproval. alternatively, u might wanna pinch your nose while holding up the oval to indicate the putrid nature of the cowardice and uptightness of our CB in singapore. then post it on your blog.

for the roystons and martyns out there.

remembering the week of triple d: drunken debating debauchery

the gabriels just outdid themselves.

apparantly last week, there was a tie in the last breaking team position for one of the lower divisions for the JGs championships, and in a hill-billy-cow-boy-western-gun-dueling effort to settle the dispute, the convenor displayed somewhat unprecedented creativity in settling the connumdrum in the most sophisticated of methods - a coin toss. and the best part, neither of the 2 unfortunate teams were in the hall to protest or at the very least attempt to determine their own fate. as far as i know, the julia gabriel debating championships are based on the rules of the world schools debating championships (as u would hear from the same broken record opening address by the chairperson before the start of each round), and according to the rules of wsdc as stated on their website, under point 7(a) :
that 'If teams are tied on the same number of wins, they shall be separated where practicable by elimination debates and otherwise on the following priority:
(i) number of adjudications in favour of the team
(ii) average judges' scores for each team'
so it is rather curious why a tournament that adopts wsdc style and rules chooses not to adopt its charter in its entirety.

in fact, in the inaugural jgs back in '99, there was a somewhat precedent case where there was a mistake in the preliminary tab and that a team that was rightfully supposed to be in the semi-final (there weren't any quarters back then) missed out on the break due to a tabulation error. it was a potentially ugly situation, the teachers of each school spent hours debating between them (that alone would have a worthy tie-breaking round debate) and with the righful breaking sch's teacher famously - and somewhat condescendingly too - declaring that 'the lousier team should gracefully step aside for the better team'. and since it was a debate competition afterall, what better way was there than to pit the 2 teams against each other? and hence the very first impromptu round in the history of JGs was held in JG centre itself, with a five judge pannelist consisting of what can be now considered singapore's debating legends (ppl like mrs geetha creffield, jason chan, vikram nair, jon yuan) a week before the semi-finals. and so it went the 'ungraceful' team won in a 4-1 split against their presumably 'better' opponents. the 'ungraceful' team eventually went on to win the semi-finals and stopping at the final step towards eternity to crumple in the grand final. it would have made for a superb debating fairy-tale had the 'ungraceful' team had won. a fairytale, perhaps as unbelievable as soccer minnows denmark's victory in the '92 european football championships (denmark were a late addition to the finals of euro 92, at the expense of rightful finalist yugoslavia who were stripped of their right to participate as a result of sanctions due to the bosnia war). luck only carries you that far, ultimately it would be true ability that will determine a team's success. so why choose the easier way to settle a break by a coin toss?

it would be excruciating to have your progress in a tournament determined soley by luck alone. i should know that. i was part of that 'very lucky' and 'ungraceful' team.
*****************************************************************************

well anyway, six years on, for better or worse, at least i've discovered the hidden aspect of debating competitions - beyond my wildest imaginations as an innocent(presumably) wide-eyed 16 y/o debater then. westers is the magic word.


the easters (or rather westers, in the exclusive context of the venue of this yr's tournament) is the abbrievated name for the australian intervarsity debating championship. it is traditionally a tournament for novice debaters from australian universities and is held over the easter weekend holidays each year. it was held in uwa, perth this year.

the weekend kick started with a fancy dress river cruise party on swan river. the theme for the costumes for the night was 'super heroes and villians'. as my senior and club president simon puts it, as hosts to the tourney, 'we have the responsibility to uphold the integrity of the fancy dresscode'. what's a poor undergrad to do? a decent fancy costume rental would easily cost 30-50 bucks and that's excluding the dry washing expense. well being a swashbuckling saviour of the world (not to mention the embarrssment of wearing one's underwear inside out)never appealed to me. i was destined for greater things, like a moth to the flame, sacrificing myself to the forces of evil in a desperate effort balance goodness and evil in the universe (which despite all this bullshit is rather true, there was a disproportionate amount of good guys on the cruise). the decision was easy henceforth. in a flanked between christian moral abosulutists who would do chivalrously do anything (unilaterally if neccessary) to counter the manevolence of a group known as the Axis of evil and its sister group 'the base', who else could be a worthy posterboy for the real supervillians other than mr bin laden? it was cheap to look like him too, very cheap in fact. all it took was a white tee-shirt (ironically one that read 'wanted: george dubya bush, for crimes against humanity and the planet') to use as a turban, a white bedsheet, courtesy of scott, a couple of safety pins courtesy of tom, and an saf gortex camoflage jacket, courtesy of thambi. my only outlay was on fake beard which costed less than 8 bucks.
the result was this:



it would have been better if i could get my hands on a toy rifle, not that i didn't try. as i found out after searching through the entire city, apparantly it's the corporate policy of retailers like toy r'us and target not to sell toy rifles.


me and alex, fellow member of the uwa contingent. we were joking about whether or not he was actually to live up to his name and protray alexander the great (ostensibly a hero), or the evil roman emperor Commodus from gladiator. either way, he would be a bisexual nympho who has an amorous relationship with his pet (alexander's horse) or a psycho with an incestuous crush on his sister. for the record, alex went almost commando beneath the costume, wearing only his briefs.


me and saddam, the lone villans against the entire 'coalition of the willing-superheroes', easily that of the entire JLA or the avengers. strangely there wasn't any x-men. i would have loved to see someone dressed as wolverine and especially psylocke - the object of my pubescent fantasies a long long time ago....




nick and jackson from uwa who are dressed as agent smith and neo respectively. it was a pure coincedence that they dressed complementarily. in fact we have never met nick (whose team was a late addition to the uwa contingent) until that nite. that sadly, is very telling of the level of communication within the uwa debating union.


me and ali g. oscar (ali g) is member of a Uni of sydney (which arguably together with monash, form australia's equivalent to oxbridge's duopoly over british debating scene)team who eventually made it to the grand final. in this respect at least, oscar shares some similarity to sacha baron cohen (the original ali g) who was a cambridge grad himself.



osama getting his ass whooped by captain america. i do recall watching a parody of an old '70s tv series videoclip that features a real life wonder woman whooping the ass of a computer generated animation of OBL. if only it was wonder woman instead....i guess i'm just submissive by nature...

the university of british columbia debating society website claims to be the only institution in the world where debating is classified as a varsity sport. a fren from nus debates once told lamented during last worlds 'if going through 9 debates for 3 consecutive days isn't a sport, i dunno what is'. and i agree with her, especially when one is required to be on the tourney bus by 8am each morning, getting ready for an entire day of debating while nursing a hangover. mulitply that by the entire length of a tourney and that would definitely be a test of pushing human endurance to stay awake in a debate, especially one with no points of informations allowed. it is no surprise that we lost all 3 rounds that day. it is however, a feeble justification for mediocrity since everyone else was nursing a hangover anyway.


the grand o' seniors from uwa. simon, bec, tilly. simon and tilly have been instrumental in injecting the fun factor, especially with all the effort they put in in produce hilarious videos which shown throughout the entire tournament. check out hosed wicked videos at the westers website. especially the one that says 'opening ceremony video', or the one that says 'simply the best'



despite being an australian intervarsity tourney, there are still non-australian teams who participate in westers as well (though they're not allowed to break)
Jackson, me, nao (who's from japan but currently on an exchange program with Uni of queensland), ami (international christian university, japan), alan (sydney) and terry (macquarie)


this social event was promoted as a beach party, but unfortunately that wasn't exactly what it was. the party was held in the WA life-saving club, which is situated near the beach, but the function room was a good 3 storeys away. this, unfortunately was possibly one of the few semblance of a beach party

tootneys and emu bitter are definitely lesser evils than the flaming sambucas and other house pours from the night before. for a start, i fucked up zippo and burnt myself and dropping it into the glass while trying light my own sambuca. more pertinently, it gives a milder hangover. or it might have been those 2 trips to the toilet bowl that did the trick. watever. anyway, day 2 was a little better. the 2 remaining preliminary debates were both silent rounds (to prevent ppl from dumping the debates, not that it din cross our minds though) so we only learnt about the decisions after they announced the break. we won the 2 remaing debates.


me and my team mates, wadzi and jake. together we form uwa team 4. while we didn't break, at least we managed to salvage what's left of our pride by stealing 2 wins in the last 2 rounds. rock on, team!

that evening was the social highlight of the entire tourney, the championship dinner held at hilton. did i mention the fact that westers is perhaps the cheapest tourney ever with an unbeatable rego of $120 that included all u can drink alcohol for 3 nites and a championship dinner. accommodation only costed an additional $100 for 4 nights stay. having seen everyone else dressed in weird fancy costumes and some cases ahem, bordering on sexual identity crisis (see above), i was indeed strange to see everyone else dressed up so sophisticatedly.



other members of the uwa contingent. above: amy (to the left of wadzi) and rosanna (to the left of alex)below: varun and eleanor. as the hosts, uwa boasts of sending 7 teams to westers and 4 of which made the break (though the fourth team was ineligible
to break due to a break-cap as part of the regulation), yet unfortunately, there were none of our teams left beyond the quarter-finals. varun and eleanor together with some of the other seniors are really excellent debaters. eleanor for one, was part of the australian wsdc champion team twice. hopefully we can better ourselves in the upcoming australs.





there was in fact an after-dinner party at a club in claremont. unfortunately, it was totally wasted with all the free-flow wine during the party. i can personally vouch that it is absoulutely revolting to get drunk purely on red wine. firstly, it doesn't seem to go away as the night progresses, and moreover when u puke, it's a whole lotta red mess, not unlike a very very heavy mensturation i would imagine. somehow with the help of my mates, i was able to get into the club, and from various accounts that i gather, apparantly all i did there was to spend the rest of the evening slouching outside the restroom sleeping until the bouncers woke me up. that was my only laspe in memory. i do recall however, puking again outside the club (it was pure water this time...damn those free flow wine, they must have gotten it from goon bags) and getting on the cab.

it is certainly no surprise that i missed the quarter-final round the next morning and only managed to catch the semis and the grand final. it was an all eastern state affair by semis, with 3 sydney university teams and a monash team. the grandfinal was however an all sydney affair, the epitome of the sydney stranglehold on australian debating. sydeny 2 emerged champions. there were pleasant surprises for our team. for a start, we hadn't did as badly as what we thought after all. our team, uwa 4 were ranked 22nd overall definitely exceed our predictions. we really thought we would be at the bottom of the tab after the demoralising 3 straight losses on the opening day.
on individual scores wise, i was ranked joint 16th best overall speaker, and 11th best novice speaker. not too bad for someone who last debated competitively 4 years ago. honestly, it was quite a fluke in a way since most of the points that pulled up my total probably came from debates against some less experienced teams and even ESL teams (we went up against the japanese composite team in the last round).

the closing nite was sadly, quite a disappointment. we were expecting a river-side bbq as stated on the programme note, but as it turns out all we had was just some pizza though the free flow beer and UDL (some aussie brand vodka fruit mix) was definitely a redeeming factor. it also helped that me and jackson had the forsesight to invest in a bottle of jim beam before leaving the hotel, one which we used to good effect.


the highlight was in fact the 'boat rowing' competition. it is a rather simple game actually, that certainly do not involve the use of oars nor boats. it involves 2 teams of 4 or 3 persons competiting to scull one can of beer each in the shortest amount of time. only when the previous 'rower' sculled his/her beer, can the next 'rower' commence sculling. it is wicked to say the least, especially so after i introduced it to my mates during our housewarming party subsequently which is a story for another entry.



the booze bus back to the hotel was awesome too. as testament to the camaraderie of the internet generation and the pervasiveness of mp3 downloads, even in our stupor, we managed to pull of a whole chain of medleys which includes parodies which u probably have a hard time finding in your local record shops. it started with the lumberjack song, spam-spam song, from Monty Python movies, then it was 'Kyle's mom is a bitch' and 'uncle fucker' from southpark, and even 'the saga begins', weird al yankovich's star wars parody of the tune of American pie. sure there were classics like 'the bohemian rhapsody' along the way as well. cheap ass karaoke at its best.


so the evening ended, with 3 sad single blokes sharing solace in potato chips, what's left of the jim beam and watching news reruns on tv. alex was probably home boning his girlfriend while we indulged in self-pity for our lack of charm. i vaguely recall seeing a few lucky ppl making out. well at least jackson and jake tried, all i could manage was to recede back to my modus operandi below


a bottle of jim beam - $40, a pack of marlboros - $8.50, a weekend at westers - PRICELESS.

now the joke is on me....david gabriels, YOU SUCK!

for 6 years, the fairytale has always ended the same way everytime. and for the 3rd time in history, it has happened on this very same night. despite riding on 2 unanimous wins and a split loss, the catholic high debate team failed to make the break for the julia gabriels national debate championships. fuck.

after playing 3 april fool's pranks over the phone to missy jurisfiction, and a combined prank fooling my uncle and my mom into believing that i got a minor pregnant, i really wished that the results i got over a long distance phone call was just another prank on me. i would have willingly played that fool. but it wasn't to be. the real fool was out there, in yusof ishak secondary adjudicating. damn you david gabriels!

i'm not sure if it is even mathematically possible for 4 teams on 2 outta 3 wins to miss out on an 8 team semi-final break in a division with less than 20 teams. much less, a (objectively speaking) prolific team with 2 unanimous wins and a split loss. but somehow catholic high 1 just had to be one of those 4 teams. in the final reckoning, it was the dubious adjudication decision in the very first preliminary round that caused it all.
i still remain very convinced having watched that entire debate that the panel's decision was ill-informed. strategically, and even in terms of analysis, there couldn't have been a justifiable reason based on the standardised style/content/strategy breakdown on why catholic high 1 could have lost to United World College 2 that night. and even after delivering the result, all the chief panelist (our most esteemed debating extraordinaire mr david gabriel, father of tournament covenor and husband of the sponsor of the tournament) could manage to say in his adjudication brief was a: (and i quote)

'well it was a good debate, i was sitting down there, i didn't really know what exactly were the issues that were brought up in the debate......and i felt that the winners of this debate, is without a doubt...XXX'


professionally, the least a qualified adjudicator could do was to at least justify the analysis of the verdict, in a coherent way in terms of the areas of clash that occured in the debate or at the very least, the strategic aspects of the debate and not purely on instincts. in the very first place, from what i understand, i dun believe our esteemed mr gabriels was either a former debater or a qualified adjudicator. kinship to primary sponsors and convenors is by no means proof of one's adjudication abilities. the very fact that he was unable to even coherently justify his decision in an adjudication debrief really pissed me off.

but of course, on the otherhand, the other pannelist who awared it to UWC is arguably one of the best debaters singapore has ever produced (he was in fact the only singaporean speaker ever to be awarded the best overall debater at a World Schools' Debating Championship). while similary i remain unconvinced by his decision, at least he bothered to justify his decision with some sort of analysis and jusfifying in on his perspective that the opposition failed to engage the prop case on what he thought was a crucial area of clash, and for that, i respected his decision.

this was perhaps the only cat high team that i've spent the most time interacting with. yes, they may not be the most stylish team around, nor do they always have the capacity to analyse all arguments in an insightful and structure manner. but having walked almost the entire journey with my dictators, and seeing them improve tremendously since the time when they were still debating minnows, and from a perspective as objective as i can be, i would dare claim that catholic high team 1 is at the very least among the top 4 secondary four debate teams in singapore, apart from nygh 1, mgs 1 and acs 1. the fact that they cannot make the break with the maximum votes from a 2 win teams, to myself at least, is an affront to the entire tournament.

maybe i'm just being a sore loser, or maybe i'm just being a malcountented has-been-old-hack-debater that i am, or maybe it's just this bottle of Carlton Crown Lager beside me that's doing the talking. whatever causality that can attributed to this pointless tirade, the fact remains, that i'm been immensely proud of kenneth, bryan, foofy, nick, andre. the saddest thing that i heard from the other seniors, is the fact about how self-centred shaun has become, and how estranged he has distanced himself from the other team-mates after being substituted from team 1. true winners treasure the times and friends they shared, losers just wane and wallow in self-pity. it's an awful shame if shaun decides to forsake this camaraderie with the other fellow dictators. it has been almost like the american idol, seeing clueless, wide-eyed secondary school kids undergoing intense debate training, only to emerge more informed, more assertive, more confident, and with a group of life-long friends to share the rest of your life with at the end of it all. that, is the implicit, but true prize in secondary school debating.

'蕉雨淅淅, 椰风飕飕
振我邦国, 万祀千秋'
--- excerpt from the Catholic High School Song