Just back from Singapore after a long weekend, visiting friends. I’ve blogged before about enjoying Singapore’s shininess – and indeed, Singapore is what Bangkok aims to become within the next couple of decades. Singapore has transformed itself from Third World to First World in just 40 years since independence from the British, and looking out across the array of lights spread out across the city from the 70th floor of the Asia Star Tower, it’s easy to be seduced by Singapore’s sense of uber-modernity. Certainly, the state-of-the-art airport and transport system which effortlessly bring you in, out and around the city showcase a distinct last-mover advantage. They let you effortlessly negotiate around a glittering array of shopping malls and restaurants, a consumer paradise where the consumers come neatly packaged to the shops, rather than the other way round. Singapore has taken and applied the lessons learnt by older cities and has delivered the reality of what 21st century living can be like. From the 70th floor view, it’s easy to forget that Singapore also has the highest rate of execution per capita anywhere in the worldand has one of the world’s most restrictive government policies towards freedom of the press.
Talking to expat friends who live in Singapore, it’s not long before the subject of censorship crops up unbidden. The government exercises a tight control over all aspects of the island nation’s life, supposedly in order to preserve the economy and Singaporean quality of life. All culture is heavily edited and messaged, and a lot of films and songs simply don’t even make it into Singapore – including stuff as innocuous as insipid fashion spoof Zoolander. Whilst the city’s credentials as a powerhouse of Asia have been fully established, the government shows no sign of beginning to relax its control over Singapore’s people and allow a move towards real democracy – or even real freedom of expression. This hasn’t stopped Singaporean film makers managing to produce oblique critiques of their society which manage to get past the censor. Associated Press recently reported on Singapore GaGa, which has become a celebrated documentary that shows the different sides of Singapore life that exist behind the neon of the international brands that clamour for attention in the streets. (There’s an official site with trailer too). I’ve yet to see the film, but I’m intrigued enough to want to get hold of it – certainly before it’s made to disappear for the sake of Singapore’s national security.
Don’t get me wrong – I like Singapore, I enjoy its efficiency and energy, the restored colonial buildings and the river and the skyscrapers – but that’s only as a tourist in the inevitable transit bubble, insulated by money and the absence of day-to-day concerns. Because shopping dominates the downtown district, there is an intense blandness to much of Singapore. It’s everything you’ve seen everywhere else, served up just so – the brands, the labels, the posters. And it’s a blandness that pervades culture, expression, the entire essence of the city – because there is too much fear to say anything else. Or even, that there is no fear because there is no longer a desire to say anything else. I don’t think that Singapore’s civil liberties need to continue to be so drastically curbed for Singapore to continue to enjoy its economic explosion – the two are not mutually exclusive. But what’s worrying is that Singapore seems to have traded the chance of choices in the shopping mall for the chance of any real choices at all. Singapore’s trade off of freedom for prosperity might well be the real definition of 21st century living.
More on Singapore GaGa:
Spike | Google | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Wikipedia | Open Directory
