Omg, it's my 100th post here!

I had my first Singapore film tutorial today. I don't mean to sound, er, superficial is not even it, but anyway, when I opened the door to the room, I thought I walked into the wrong class. I actually stepped back before I stepped forward again, saw my tutor and told myself, 'Karen, correct class." Because, er, I thought that the class didn't look 'arts' at all at first glance. I thought I walked into a Math class or something.

Or maybe it's just that I'm not used to such a big (25) tutorial class. It's just like, filled with people I've never seen. And they are all on time! No, scratch that. They are early.

Anyway, the class is quite good. I like the tutor. She is nice and seems to know what she is talking about. Am glad am not in Edna Lim's class, whatever Weiliang says. :P

It just occured to me today that Singapore film may be a class that is more difficult than I thought. For one thing, defining 'Singapore film' is really hard. I kept insisting to myself that Bujang Lapok is a Singapore film, but am not quite sure if I can justify it. I guess the problem boils down to the fact that we are a migrant country and whatever we do, someone somewhere is going to say, 'hey that's not Singaporean, it's [fill in country] who did it first." Starting to sound like Singapore Society module again, huh? But I guess the fundamentals are not that different after all. Oh heck, they are exactly the same.

When we look at different national cinema, the first thing that differentiates a country's film style from another usually has its root in specific cultural influences. Take Japanese cinema for example, which is one of the easiest to spot not only because the films are in Japanese, but also because of its distinctive traits like static camera angles, no-care for 180 rule, which has their roots in kabuki traditions, and definitive themes like Japanese family structure, culture, social environment etc. Singapore cannot lay claim to any stylistic influences for certain because whatever we do that has its influences in ethnic traditions, they came from somewhere else first, and just because we put them all together doesn't make it ours. And even if we are capable of doing that, we would probably find ourselves quite similar to say, our neighbour, Malaysia, since they also multi-racial and hey, Malaysian city life not much different from Singapore also lor.

So the only thing we've got is probably Singlish and socio-cultural/political specifics unique to the local context. Concerns are likely to be universal in the general sense, but fine-tuned to local context, which makes the traits of a Singapore film time-specific, since they only hold currency at the time it is filmed, when the issues are still fresh and people are still interested in them. In other words, the easiest way for contemporary viewers to recognise a Singapore film depends on the way the film can effectively mirror reality, or at least, conceptualise the contemporary concerns that are time-specific. Otherwise, it is almost impossible to recognise a distinctly Singaporean film. Especially when they are commerical productions that look a lot like they belong somewhere else.

And sometimes, I also can't help but wonder if our lack of distinctive cinematic traits is due to the fact that we are deemed to be so 'clean'. For sure, we have our issues, but they are hardly as dramatic, and therefore entertaining and effortlessly self-perpetuating as the Hongkong gangster films. It seems like we simply lack inspiration of the dramatic sort, or are just not confident enough to create something that is our own. I once believed that we have great potential in supernatural films since Singapore got so many ghost stories, right? But no one seems to be seriously exploring that option. Experimental Singapore films (just look at those screenings at The Art House, or Substation), in my impression, tend to be arty-farty, and more often than not look to the outside in search of universalism and for stylistic 'instruction' instead of just focusing on us, me, you, here, Singapore, as Jack Neo and the boys who did Tak Giu have done. And that, I think, may be the reason why, as a nation, in whatever we do (except politics, perhaps) we are constantly so confused and unrooted and floating in circles without ever getting anywhere.