Reading Asian brands in Singapore

Check out what I found in my Project Shop Blood Brothers shopping bag today:

and what came along in the sling bag for Xodus – shoe retailer whom I understand has a manufacturing facility based in Malaysia:

Seems to me cross-marketing is the in trend amongst retailers in Singapore. Zouk and Nation Party being the renowned party venue and event locally and regionally, these brochures also impress upon the recipient (me) the (desired) profile of the customers – Xodus is going for those young nubile party-goers at Zouk and Project Shop Blood Brothers has, once again, sealed its reputation as the gay-friendly brand.

Me? I don’t really fit well into either categories. Ok, the most I would go is gay friendly, but I’m certainly far from young and nubile. But does it speak of my inner aspirations? Maybe ;). Ain’t it a commonly accepted myth that the vibrant youths and gay population are more often than not the trendsetters in a cosmopolitan city. Right, I’m fetishizing the youth and gay culture again :P.

Anyways, the ticket pricing for Nation Party is certainly telling of the extent of economic loss to Singapore for NOT hosting the event within its homophobic terrain.

The logos printed at the back of Nation Party card speak volume of a different story in the corporate world. MNCs – like Hilton and JetStar – certainly have less reservations sponsoring and seeking branding opportunities from a glbt event. Obviously the pink dollar is too lucrative to pass up.

New Asian Women (3) – My Sassy Girl (2001 – )

Name:

Ms Anonymous, well with a character so Sassy and hard-to-miss, she doesn’t really need a name.

Who is she?:
Aspiring scriptwriter who wins hearts as the loud, bizarre and ‘abusive’ girlfriend of Kyun-woo, the atypical hero – an underdog at school and obviously in his newfound love life. This unlikely couple first encountered each other on the subway where the hero had to clean up the mess after the unnamed, drunk heroine who puked all over a middle-aged man. Obviously attractive in looks and stature, the heroine is more often than not an abrasive free spirit unafraid of transgressing conventions to achieve her desired ends (eg faking pregnancy to get the hero out from class for a day out with her).

Some memorable (‘abusive’) moments in the movie:

(1) The scene where she threw up all over the wig of a balding middle-aged man in the subway is plain classic (slapstick, but really who cares when it provides such a good laugh)

(2) Also hilarious is how she appears to dominate over Mr Underdog in the early days of their relationship eg forcing him to order ONLY coffee when they dine out and switch his shoes for her heels when she suffered from aching legs.

Breakthrough factors:

(1) Probably one of the earliest leading female character in a Korean production to stand up to her male counterpart. Prior to My Sassy Girl, most Korean productions tend to play up the subservient role of women in a heterosexual relationship, particularly in a traditional Korean family unit. Recall for instance, Huo Hua or literally translated as Firework.

(2) Certainly one of the earliest big screen offspring of cyberpop culture – scripting of the film was inspired by a series of online love letters posted by Kim Ho-sik.

Scream factor: phenomenal

Scoring a string of box successes in East Asia and fast became the most popular Korean film amongst Asian Americans.

In the pipeline is a Hollywood remake due for release in 2007. The success of My Sassy Girl has also spun off a manga series authored by its original storyteller, Kim Ho-sik.

Gen-xi comments:

Love the spunk of My Sassy Girl. However, as most reviews were quick to point out, the bravado of our unnamed hero is perhaps a (false) front for an emotionally vulnerable heart. It’s still gratifying though to break the mould of long suffering Korean girlfriends/wives. This is perhaps a big screen reflection of social reality in Korea where women are gaining voice in private and public sphere. During my first trip to Korea in 2003, I was regaled by tales of how a public protest carried out by enraged Korean women against alleged molestation in subway had effected a new ruling to keep men out of designated compartments. Yet, as my (obviously male chauvinistic) tourist had pointed out, women’s subsequent reluctance to keep to the domain of these designated compartments, have served to counter and lead to the abolishment of the ruling.

Coming back to My Sassy Girl, I would say this is Korean’s answer to Japan’s Makino Tsukushi, their popularity is but a signal of more spunky female characters to arrive in Asian popular culture.

i apologise …

In quick succession within the last two weeks, top religious, political and business leaders expressed regrets publicly over some earlier statements or actions.

“I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims. These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect.”

Pope Benedict XVI on his (untimely) speech borrowing the quote of the Byzantine Emperor Maneul II Paleologus who claimed Prophet Muhammad had spread ‘the faith he preached … by the sword’. See full report on BBC news, 18 September 2006.

“The economy has never been as good as it is and living standards have never been so high as they are now.” In 2006 he said, “It was wrong for us to mislead the people.” However no formal apology was given ever since.

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on lying about the ‘nothing but sh*t’ his party has accomplished over the past four years to secure the party’s re-election in April 2006. See Budapest Week, 19 September 2006 for full report(s).

“Now that we know the depth of what has transpired, I take full accountability to drive the actions to set it right. I extend my sincerest apologies to those journalists who were investigated and to everyone who was impacted.”

Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard CEO and Chairman, responding to the outcry over the corporate surveillance of board members, staff and journalists. See full report on BBC News, 22 September 2006.

Religious, political and business leaders are far from perfect – they make silly mistakes sometimes like you and me. Yet it is exactly their responsibilities as leaders shouldering the livelihood, faith and hopes of their many followers that so weigh on the import of their actions and words.

The question that normal people like you and me to answer is whether we would rather live with false hopes fueled by half-truths or outright lies or face up to the reality of honest but harsh confessions.

Not an easy question to answer, I suppose.

Making a joke out of Racism

via Youtube.

Freaking smartass way of putting across the sticky issues around racism. If you are an aspiring racist, take the cue from Russell Peters. Be a stand-up comic. Start off by cracking jokes about your own race, then pepper it with jokes about others (eg Africans). Hey, this is quite a classic answer to my racist post.

I do so wonder what Mr. Peters would say to my post on illegal (male) Indian sex labour in Singapore. One thing for sure, hormonal population control ain’t gonna make it as an official answer to appease the ruling elites in an island nation strapped of (human) resources.

The digital music battlefield

Copyright, copyleft – what exactly is a viable business model that will maximise the (liberalising) potential of digital media without stifling the (commercial) impetus that is thought to stimulate creativity?

It’s still a battlefield out there, with new and entrenched industry players trying to make sense of the brand new (and for some of them frightening) world.

Right now, it does appear from a recent study done on iPod users that iTunes, the pay per tune model championed by Jobs, the once-upon-a-time saviour of record companies, ain’t going down that well with the consumers. Ok fair enough, 20 paid songs per iPod could be a good start, but iPod has been around since 2001…

Yet this ain’t gonna stop the rest from trying. Warner has struck a deal with Youtube to promote and license its music to Youtube users.

Interestingly, this piece of news was released just four days after Universal Music revealed possible intentions to sue Youtube for copyright infringement.

It’s certainly a confusing yet exciting world out there. Call me a cheapskate freeloader, I’m gonna enjoy my free downloads for as long as I can.

Whose words count?

Monday night on Channel U Crossfire. Discussion on the impact of digital technology on human relationships.

An invited guest – a middle-aged secondary school teacher commented on the lack of emotive expression and artistry in the mobile or internet lingo. This has attracted an almost instantaneous retort from another invited guest – a younger man in his mid twenties, who argues for the use of emoticons as the emotive make-up of mobile lingo.

To a certain extent, such interchange is a visible proof of digital and generation divide between the technologically savvy and inclined youth and the more skeptical (cynical?) and cautious middle-aged Singaporeans.

I would have left it at that if not for my earlier conversation with an aspiring Gen-Y photographer. We had a(n) (almost heated) argument over the impact and value of blogs as alternative media and source of information.

To sum it up in brief, this promising photographer – though not quite shy of exploiting network media as a platform to promote his works – remains highly critical of the quality of cyber-texts. A prolific reader, he quoted a recent publication of a well-known and -respected blogger as an example, arguing that this blogger has thrived on churning good anecdotes online but has obviously failed to produce coherent texts worthy of literary acclaim.

On reflection, I think this really begs the question as to:

(1) how far we could/should transfer texts from one medium to another

(2) how far we should judge the quality of texts produced for network media based on standards for traditional media, and this leads naturally to the following question,

(3) should we be exploring alternative reading of network media if indeed, the traditional way is no longer relevant?

Put it another way, have we also reached a juncture where we would need to re-examine traditional norms that are clearly challenged by new forms of social conduct, which have evolved alongside the developments in communication technology?

Similarly, I would think it’s an irrelevant exercise to prejudge Reality TV based on traditional TV production values.

That much said, I do have to qualify here that I’m not for the idea of trashing all our historical literary treasures.

So in short my answer would be, to each of his/her own. It’s ultimately your own word that counts (or the romantic in me would like to think so) in cyberspace.

My word cloud

This is so cool. Ok, frankly speaking, this cloud has gone some degree of censorship.

Got this through Whitebait via Snapshirts.

New Asian Women (2): Women in Singapore

Justin Deimen sums it up rather well when he said this of Singapore Dreaming, the critically acclaimed local production that is screening in major theatres around the island,

“Singapore Dreaming raises several important questions that point to what it means to be Singaporean.”

Here I would like to focus on how the movie has provided a multi-layered perspective as to what it means to be a woman in a predominantly migrant Asian society. In Singapore Dreaming, we witness a construction of feminine identities not only by age group and education levels but also their status as either new or second generation migrants:

– Siew Luan, originally from neighbouring Malaysia, has settled down in Singapore since her marriage to Poh Huat, the patriarch of Loh family. Her subservience to Poh Huat not only speaks aloud of a patriarchal Asian family structure, but perhaps also of her dependency on her husband as full-time home-maker and first generation working class migrant.

– Mei and Irene, daughter and intended daughter-in-law of Siew Luan, represent the emerging feminine voices of 2nd or 3rd generation migrant women since 1990s (now considered as the incumbents). These are women who are caught in between the demand of a modernising or modernised economy and the outmoded social norms that continue to subordinate the feminine to the masculine in a patriarchal Asian family/society.

– Pinkie, the presumably Filippino maid, and the unnamed ‘beer lady’ from Mainland China – the ‘foreign bodies’ who not only accentuate the discrimination confronting working class new migrants but also this obsession for upward social mobility that so entraps the lives of modern Singaporeans. These are the faces of women who have subsisted at the lower rang of Singapore society in the hope of seeking a springboard to attain their aspirations or escape the poverty trap in their home country. It is through the eyes of these new migrants that the movie builds up an interrogation of the Singapore Dream – this tireless pursuit of 5Cs that may have cost the incumbents their aspirations and indeed their humanity.

Kudos to Singapore Dreaming for its ambitious attempt to address the many facades of Singaporean (feminine) identities. So how could anyone ever derive a common denominator for Asian feminine identities, if we were to consider just how widely varied their voices are in the tiny island nation of Singapore? And how far are the issues or glass ceilings confronting the new and old migrants in Singapore representative of those in other migrant nations (regardless of the East-West Divide)?

World Press Photo 06

Mother & child at emergency feeding center, Tahoua, Niger
By Finbarr O’Reilly, Canada, Reuters

was described as ‘beauty, horror and despair’.

For me, it’s one word, haunting.

Go on, catch this travelling exhibition at the brand new National Library off Bugis Junction before it’s gone.

Not quite the sumptuous banquet

Another Zhang Ziyi, oops! it should be Ziyi Zhang’s vehicle is now screening in major cinemas across the island. Methinks The Banquet is clearly in the same league as Chen Kaige’s The Promise, and not far off from Zhang Yimou’s Hero. My verdict, watch this movie if:

1. You are a sucker for martial arts sequences.

2. You’ve enjoyed Hero and all those Made for Hollywood Chinese martial arts productions.

3. You are a big fan of Zhang Ziyi, oops! it should be Ziyi Zhang.

And no, this is no where close to Lee Ang, oops! Ang Lee’s Croaching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.