The state of the Singaporean movie industry: pure sexist trash?

Hello again everyone. I actually laughed out aloud when I read this review with slated the latest Ah Boys To Men (ABTM) movie - in this review, Nelson Chong called it a piece of 'pure sexist trash'. If I may respond with a very Singlish experiene, abuden? That is actually a contraction of the words "ah but then" in Singlish it means something like "what did you expect?" I did talk about the state of the local Singaporean movie industry in a recent post which was about the way an Indian actor Shrey Bhargava was treated in a very racist manner during the audition for this movie. In today's post, I am not going to be talking about ABTM4 but exploring the (rather dismal) state of the Singaporean movie industry.

The problem with the Singaporean movie industry is that of language: we don't have our own language in Singapore. The four official languages are English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil and if you want English movies, then take your pick: there are plenty of choices from the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and even Ireland. If it is Chinese movies you're after, then there's plenty from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. If you prefer something in Malay, then there's plenty from Malaysian and Indonesia - heck, there are even two full length feature films from Brunei (not that they are any good). Finally if you want Tamil films, then there are plenty from India and Sri Lanka. Compare that to a country like Estonia, whereby there is a captive local market for Estonian language films and it may be a somewhat niche market, but at least you can appeal to an Estonian-speaking audience who prefer not to read subtitles. In Singapore, the language situation is such that you have way too much competition from abroad and you're struggling to compete with Hollywood blockbusters made with budgets that Singaporean directors can never dream of. What about Singlish, you ask? It's not a unique language per se because those who speak Singlish will usually have little problem understanding a movie from China or America, so the existence of Singlish doesn't really create a unique, captive market for local film maker.

Here's the thing about going to the cinema: with the amount of media available online, it is all too easy to watch something on your laptop or TV from the comfort of your home rather than having to go purchase a rather expensive cinema ticket. We go to the cinema for the experience of being transported to another world, to totally immerse ourselves in the movie - would a Singaporean living in Ang Mo Kio pay that kind of money to watch a film set in Ang Mo Kio? Probably not if they are hoping to be transported to another world thanks to the magic of cinema, but there is a niche that Jack Neo has very cleverly spotted. Singapore is changing so remarkably fast in so many ways: the look and the feel of city changes and even I get lost on my visits to Singapore when I try to track down something that existed back in the mid 1990s but no longer exists. The high rates of immigration has also changed the local culture considerably, notably with the huge influx of Mandarin-speaking migrants. Older Singaporeans over the age of 40 will remember a very different Singapore from their childhood and certainly, there have been some films and TV programmes have tapped into this sense of nostalgia that have done well - most notably, Homerun, Jack Neo's film from 2003 which was set in 1965.

There is a comprehensive list of Singaporean films on Wikipedia and it makes for grim reading: the list provides the production cost and the box office takings. Good grief, very few films actually made any profit and some of the flops are shocking. The 2017 film Lucky Boy was made with a budget of $2.5 million and took just $40,000 at the box office. Ouch. Talk about making a loss. Only a few notable successes stand out and these have almost all been Jack Neo's more successful films including the original ABTM and Money No Enough. Mind you, it is not as if Neo has the Midas touch when it comes to any local film - he was listed as one of the producers on Lucky Boy! But here's the thing about capturing this nostalgia market - yes there's a part of me that is nostalgic about the past, but would I rather spend money on a film that will bring me back to a time in my younger days or do I want to be transported into a completely fictional world that doesn't even exist, such as in the movies Avatar, Transformers, Star Wars or Star Trek? That would depend on the personality of each individual - do you look ahead to the future or do you prefer to reminisce about the past? Do you think the future is an exciting adventure that has yet to begin, or do you long for the days when life was simpler? 

Indeed, the most successful Singaporean film of all time is ABTM and it does see NS life through rose tinted lenses. For many of us, doing NS was something we just had to do whether we liked it or not - yes I did learn some valuable lessons along the way but I can't say I have been ever nostalgic about my time in NS. However, for many Singaporean men, it will bring back memories of their NS days and it was a simpler time for most of us: you merely follow orders, you were told exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it and for the vast majority of Singaporean men, life did get considerably more complex once they completed NS. Most have gone on to further education after they have completed NS and taken on a lot more responsibility in their professional lives. Many men have also gone on to have children of their own, which represents yet another kind of responsibility for them. Thus NS can and often does represent a time in their lives when life was indeed a lot simpler and easier - some of these men actually did enjoy NS and the ABTM series was shot on Pulau Tekong (amongst other locations). That's an island used for military training that most older Singaporean men will be familiar with but off limits to civilians - ABTM does actually appeal to this nostalgic market and that probably accounts for a lot of its initial success earlier in the series. However, Jack Neo is trying to appeal to a pretty small target audience.

The problem though is the limit of this 'Singaporean nostalgia market' because Jack Neo is primarily targeting older Singaporeans (who are pretty much like himself) and he knows this market very well. He has paid his dues doing his skits as Liang Popo and Liang Ximei on 搞笑行动 for many years.  However, it is a shrinking market as many of his older viewers from the 1980s and 1990s are already dead or dying (there's no delicate way to put this). Those older viewers were a lot more dedicated to Jack Neo's work in those pre-internet days when we had very limited choice when it came to our entertainment. Jack Neo was so popular in those days! The viewers of today have a vast range of options ranging from Youtube clips to various on-demand programmes to a huge number of international channels. Furthermore, a lot of Neo's core audience were the Chinese educated Singaporeans like my father who spoke little or no English - this limited their ability to access entertainment in English if they couldn't understand much English. These Chinese schools used Mandarin as the main language of instruction or subjects like maths, science, history and geography whilst English was at best taught as a second or foreign language. Well, these Chinese-medium schools were phased out by 1979 and the compromise was the SAP system, where more hours were dedicated to the teaching of the Chinese language to ensure that the students were effectively bilingual but the language of instruction for all the other subjects became English.

What this meant was that those who were educated primarily in Chinese would have completed their secondary education by 1979, making them about at least 54 years old today. Many parents in the 1970s saw the writing on the wall and opted to educate their children in English rather than Chinese, so Jack Neo's core audience of Chinese-educated, Mandarin speaking hardcore fans are mostly in their 50s, 60s and 70s today. Talk about appealing to the grey dollar. Thus when Nelson Chong calls ABTM4 a pile of "pure sexist trash" - I wonder if he had ever seen any of Jack Neo's skits from his 搞笑行动 era? There are some clips on Youtube if you are really interested but they do come across as painfully slapstick and not intellectual at all - it is almost as if Jack Neo is trying to appeal to the most uneducated Chinese Singaporeans out there and he really doesn't care if the more educated Singaporeans turn their noses up at his brand of slapstick 搞笑行动 humour. The clip below has very little merit - it features an altercation between two of Jack Neo's actors (Mark Lee and Henry Thia) which culminates in a food fight in a hawker center.  It feels painfully dated to watch this today, but this was just the kind of humour that made Jack Neo a household name back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Should Jack Neo try to appeal to English speaking, highly educated Singaporeans? Well, that would be a tall order as these people would normally shun local entertainment anyway in favour of foreign imports. Jack Neo is unabashedly going for a certain segment of the Singaporean market who are still loyal to him and will gladly spend money on a cinema ticket for such a film. Judging from the way Nelson Chong writes, he clearly isn't in Jack Neo's target market and quite frankly, neither am I - but I'm going to give Jack Neo some credit. I believe he knows exactly what he is doing because he ultimately needs to create a film that is going to be a commercial success rather than use it to prove that he is some kind of cinematic genius. And if Nelson Chong thinks that he is too atas for Jack Neo's films, then well, feel free to go watch some cryptic French black and white art house movie without subtitles just to prove how incredibly cultured you are. Heck, I live in the UK and judging by the circulation of the most popular newspapers, I can tell you that most of the people in this country are idiots who read trashy tabloids whilst the more atas newspapers offering profound analysis and commentary are read by far fewer people. Such is the nature of the capitalist market: we have choice as consumers. So if Jack Neo's movies aren't your cup of tea, you can always choose to watch something else that does appeal to you.

However, I get a feeling that Nelson Chong is upset because there are very few Singaporean movies and I'm sure he would like to see local movies of a better quality, that weren't so heavily reliant on slapstick humour. So what is the future for Singaporean movies? Bleak I'm afraid. The fact is, Singaporeans Sembawang and Choa Chu Kang will watch plenty of American movies but the chances of an American in San Diego or Chicago ever seeing a TV programme or film made in Singapore is negligible. Filmmakers in Singapore are desperately trying hard to find that one USP to persuade Singaporeans to watch a local film instead of a foreign one because they have pretty much given up on trying to make their films go international. However, the more you try to appeal to your loyal Singaporean audience, the more you risk alienating audiences from another country who may not get Singlish humour. It would be nice if a Singaporean filmmaker could do a film like Avatar which is not culturally specific to any country, but still tells a compelling story about us as a human race. Don't get me wrong, I would enjoy a movie like Lulu the movie featuring Michelle Chong as I get her sense of humour, but I fail to see how that would have any international appeal outside Singapore. Who will be the first Singaporean filmmaker who will dare to make a film for more than just Singaporeans and will we ever see such a film?

Personally, I have actually consumed probably more Singaporean movies than most Singaporeans. Once in a while, I could stumble across something on the internet that makes me feel homesick and watching a Singaporean movie is something I indulge in when I get that feeling. Inevitably, I feel a bit let down by the quality of the production - it often reminds me of one of those long running drama series that was the staple of Singaporean TV in the 1980s and 1990s. Is it unreasonable to expect my films to be exciting rather than mundane? The problem with ABTM for me is not so much the low brow slapstick humour, but the fact that it is probably way too familiar for me having served NS myself. I'm not after a documentary to remind me of a certain aspect of life in Singapore - but rather I want to see something extraordinary that will take me by surprise. Through in a few plot twists that will leave viewers saying, "I never saw that coming" and you have a good movie. The problem with most Singaporean films is that they are so painfully predictable like most of those TV series - the only one did break the mould was Royston Tan's 15 but even then, it was a journey without a destination because the ending left most people saying, "huh, was that it? That's the ending? What was the point of all that? This movie didn't go anywhere, it was just confusing." It seems to me that the greatest challenge is getting hold of decent script writers who are willing to raise the bar and create something epic and refreshingly original.

So that's it from me on this issue. Please let me know what you think about Singaporean movies? Have you watched any Singaporean movies and what do you think about them? Do Singaporeans spend their dollars on Singaporean movies when they go to the cinema? What's your favourite Singaporean movie? What would it take for a Singaporean movie to go international and get a general release say in the UK or USA? Please leave your thoughts below, thanks for reading.