Singapore – Why So Serious?

Do Singaporeans take themselves too seriously and lack the ability to laugh at themselves?

Are we so self-absorbed, moody, prudish and so focused in chasing our dreams that we forget to take some time off to chill out and smell the roses?

When I raised this with my friends, some of them replied that Singapore is not the place to “chill” and “smell the roses” but to make money while you can.

We seem to be on a treadmill where we are constantly thinking of earning more money, buying our dream home or car, getting a degree and so on and so forth. Have we forgotten the little things that make life beautiful and liveable? Have we become too serious for our own good?

I ask these questions in the light of some recent news that made our headlines in both mainstream and social media.

The first is the news about a Gallup survey that said Singaporeans are the most unhappy people in the world, more correctly, the least likely to report having positive emotions. The survey polled 148 countries and Singapore fared worse than Haiti, Afghanistan and even Syria, where there is currently a rebellion.

By the way, Panama ranked number one, as the country with the most people who report having positive emotions. The Latin American countries fared very well in this survey, taking 8 out of the top 10 places.

In a similar Gallup poll last year, Singaporeans were also ranked as the least emotional people in world i.e. people who showed the least emotion, either positive or negative. Filipinos were judged to be the most emotional.

I think concert organizers, emcees and “live” show hosts may nod their heads furiously in agreement with the latter seeing how difficult it is to get spontaneous applause from a Singaporean crowd.

There were a spate of other related media events which seem to question the Singaporean threshold for pranks, parodies and satires.

One of them was the Ken Kwek’s film, Sex.Violence.Family Values. The Media Development Authority (MDA) banned the film because one of the 3 short comedic stories which the film was made up of, was racially sensitive. This was later overturned by the Films Appeals Committee and the film was given a R21 rating with edits.

Film enthusiasts and local proponents of greater creative freedom of expression in the arts applaud the move because they feel the film uses satire to highlight a social ill – racism.

Then there was the termination of The Married Men’s increasingly popular morning radio show on Hot 91.3FM.

The show’s popular prank segment called “Kena Pluck” backfired when a listener complained about the DJs going too far in carrying out the prank . The lady who was pranked had applied to do an early childhood degree in a foreign university and the DJs pretended to be consulate officials who were doing a background check on her to ascertain if she was “eligible” to do the course.

They asked her if she hit children to which she denied doing so. The DJs then advised her that it was OK to hit children from poor families because they lacked the financial muscle to sue her in court.

The DJs then asked her if she was willing to do “favours” in order to get her visa application approved, something that is politically sensitive given all the media publicity surrounding government officials caught in sex-for-favours corruption cases.

Fans of The Married Men were obviously unhappy and a Facebook appeal against the ban is currently ongoing. Some of fans actually asked people to “chill” and to not take life so seriously. Sound familiar?

I started thinking about this a little more deeply. I know that there were some people who feel that the “Kena Pluck” segment is not appropriate at all and should never be incorporated into The Married Men’s show.

But if that is so, then why do we have the Just For Laughs – Singapore edition shown on Channel 5? This is basically the Singapore series of the very popular Canadian prank show Just For Laughs. [click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right of the screen].

I think its very funny and some of the pranks are really testing the boundary between humour and humiliation, but those who were pranked always managed to laugh at the end when all is revealed (or maybe it is a case of “what choice do I have?”).

So perhaps it is not so much whether prank segments should be shown or heard in our media but what type of pranks are being played on viewers or listeners. And inherent in this is our ability to manoeuver the OB (out-of-bound) markers i.e. the boundaries that separates what is sensitive (and therefore should not be discussed) and what is not.

Sociologists will tell you that humour is often determined by the cultural context of the area where people live or originate from. Customs, social mores and values determine the thin and often porous boundary between humour and mockery.

Perhaps no other society manifests this dilemma more than the countries in the Middle East.

Can you play a prank on an Arab gentleman or lady without either of them feeling insulted?

We have such a narrow view of the Middle Eastern people’s concept of humour because the popular media stereotypes them as serious, unsmiling, having very strict social rules concerning inter-mixing between men and women.

But Maz Jobrani, an American stand-up comedian of Iranian descent, used this as the subject of his act in Doha, Qatar last year, to great comedic effect. I was certainly entertained as were all the Qatari men and women in the audience.

Check out the TEDTalks video below and you will see how the humour stayed within the safe boundaries of what is acceptable in the Qatari and wider Middle Eastern culture. What I thought was great was the audience was able to laugh at themselves without taking offence because the humour was expertly crafted to suit the audience’s taste.

Humour and laughing at ourselves would not be complete without discussing Mr Alvin Tan and his girlfriend, Ms Vivian Lee. Mr Tan, a Malaysian, was a former ASEAN scholar and final year Law undergraduate at NUS. He had his scholarship terminated for his explicit blogs on sex.

Mr Tan and his girlfriend were unapologetic and proceeded to start their own Youtube channel discussing anything and everything about sex in their own unmistakeably irreverent manner and their own brand of humour.

They feel it is their mission to get Malaysians and Singaporeans to be less prudish and more open about taboo topics like sex and feel more comfortable talking about them.

Some people view their actions as purely fun and harmless. But others feel that they should be socially responsible to their audience and warn them that whatever tips they maybe handing out about sex is only their opinion and should not be taken as expert advice.

Whatever the case maybe, I think Singaporeans, in general, could use a good dose of humour in their lives. It has been medically proven that laughter is the best medicine.

Laughter is contagious. It helps to relieve the stresses in our lives and binds us as a community.

And in the spirit of laughing at ourselves here’s a joke about men (from a woman’s perspective) which my wife and I suspect, many women, just love. And I hope it tickles your funny bone too!

“Men are like fine wine.  They all start out like grapes, and it’s our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.”  Source – http://www.jokes.com/