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Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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4:35 pm - how to write a screening report in 2 hours
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1) Procrastinate
2) Overwrite beyond the 1200 word limit
3) Cut the parts you have overwritten and put them in the endnotes
Ta-dah!
While an animated film is capable of incorporating various genres, from action-adventure, comedy and the musical, it might be useful to consider animation itself as a distinct genre of its own. This particular genre has certainly evolved from its earliest incarnation as children’s entertainment, and recent animated films from major Hollywood studios such as Disney and Dreamworks certainly display an increasing sophistication in terms of not only their aesthetics (signaled notably by a shift from traditional cell animation to 3D animation), but also their narrative content and thematic concerns. It is not uncommon for contemporary animated films to project a mode of ‘dual address’—where fairy-tale plots and adorable characters co-exist with cynical in-jokes, self-reflexive moments and intertextual asides, in an attempt to stretch their appeal to both children and adults.(1)
In many ways, animated feature films, especially those produced by the Walt Disney Animation Studios, embody the various characteristics of Hollywood blockbusters. Firstly, a strategy of pre-selling is almost guaranteed, as many of these animated films are based on classic children’s stories. Secondly, the home video market for cartoons is so lucrative that it has often resulted in the production of straight-to-video sequels and spin-offs which bypass theatrical distribution.(2) Thirdly, the merchandising for animated films is often aggressive, capitalizing on the appeal of cartoon characters to sell anything from soft toys to tricycles. Fourthly, and specifically in the case of a media conglomerate like Disney, a diversified business portfolio allows other opportunities for ancillary marketing; Disney’s theme park, Disneyland, for example, faithfully recreates the fictional worlds found in its animated films. Lastly, big-budget animation technology is often predisposed towards the manufacture of spectacle—the dominant aesthetic mode of blockbusters—the animated film itself being one long-running special effect.
However, there are some crucial ways in which animated films depart from the formulas that define the Hollywood blockbuster. One of these is due to the ontological character of animation itself—real actors cannot appear in a ‘pure’ animated film. Hence one of the fundamentals that govern blockbuster production—that of casting ‘A-list’ stars—needs to be tweaked. One solution lies in casting recognizable stars to provide voices for the cartoon characters—a practice possibly pioneered in the film Aladdin (1992), with Robin Williams lending his own hyperactive persona to a manic, accent-shuffling genie.(3)
This essay will analyse Wall-E, a recent animated film by Pixar studios, a subsidiary of Disney. It tells the story of a sentient robot called Wall-E, an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth Class). In a post-apocalyptic future, Wall-E faithfully performs his programmed task of compacting trash—but on a deserted Earth, afflicted by topsoil erosion, sandstorms and freak lightning blizzards. His only companion is a cockroach, and Wall-E sometimes occupies himself collecting junk oddities, such as a videocassette recording of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and a Rubik’s cube. One day, he receives a visitor: a sleek, capsule-shaped robot called Eve (Extraterritorial Vegetation Evaluator). Wall-E eventually falls in love with the initially hostile, plasma-gun trigger-happy Eve, and later discovers what had happened to the humans who had abandoned the planet. One could classify the film as science-fiction, although there are also strong elements of action-adventure and romance.
Wall-E, made at a cost of US$180 million, is Pixar’s most expensive animated film to date. According to Schatz (1993), “the reward risk factor…holds that reaping the potential benefits of a hit requires heavy up-front spending on marketing as well as production” (p. 28). Given that Wall-E does not boast a star line-up of voice talents, one can assume that much of the budget was channeled towards maintaining high production values. Indeed, the film is a marvel of verisimilitude: the textural detailing includes the dirt that keeps crumbling off Wall-E’s tank-treads and the individual LED bulbs that together compose Eve’s eyes.(4)
Wall-E, like many other Pixar films, is not a pre-sold product. However, in an early trailer for Wall-E, the viewer is shown a café, where apparently a meeting took place among Pixar’s creative directors, among them director Andrew Stanton and producer John Lasseter. On the back of a napkin, we see early doodles that would later be developed into the films Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003). Both movies are wildly successful animated blockbusters, with US$525 million and US$825 million worldwide gross respectively. Hence, the story that is being marketed is not the diegesis of Wall-E; instead, what is pre-sold is the concluding chapter of a planned trinity that found its modest genesis in a nondescript café. To have Wall-E share the same originary drawing-board as the other two films is to guarantee audiences of its production quality, as well as to raise expectations of how it might outdo its predecessors.
In certain ways Wall-E does surpass its antecedents, though in quite radical and unexpected ways. Animated films are often replete with an anthropomorphic impulse, where toys, fish and monsters assume human traits. In Wall-E, the protagonists essentially do not have faces: what passes for Wall-E’s countenance is a pair of binocular eyes, whereas Eve’s expressions are telegraphed via a pair of blue ‘eyes’ on a black screen. Furthermore, for the most part, Eve lacks appendages; her robot arms only occasionally emerge from her sides. This extreme minimalism—the lovers are basically a sliding cube and a flying egg—challenges some cherished notions about the triumphalism of 3D animation: that technology will one day create effects so photorealistic that pixels will replace human actors. Wall-E seems to suggest that the future of what we understand as performance lies not in the precise reproduction of the human figure (and the face, locus of complex emotional nuances), but in the possibilities of the post-human form.(5)
Another feature of Wall-E which deserves mention is its intertextuality. As Schatz (1993) has remarked, “the blockbuster tends to be intertextual and purposefully incoherent…which favours texts strategically ‘open’ to multiple readings and multimedia reiteration.” (p. 34). In Wall-E, ironies abound, haunted by anachronisms: Wall-E learns about true love from a film panned on its release for its hokey sentimentality, and the animated film itself, set in the future, plays in large part like a silent movie.(6) Throughout the film, there are winking references to the sci-fi canon. From Star Wars: Wall-E’s voice was designed by the same man who created R2D2’s bleeps. From 2001: A Space Odyssey: an internal autopilot that sounds like HAL, and Wagner’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, this time not marking the evolution of apes to man, but a restoration of man’s upright posture after a decadent slide into immobility. In the future, over-nannied by attendant robots, the musculo-skeletal system has become vestigial.
Wall-E is an ambivalent blockbuster. There is a persistent melancholy running through the film that defies erasure by the obligatory redemptive ending. Some of the risks it takes: minimal dialogue, limiting the humanoid expressive resources of its protagonists, a blunt, cautionary eco-message, could possibly undermine its commercial appeal. Despite these seeming gestures of auteurist autonomy, the film cannot escape its corporate origins in Disney.
One wonders, however, if there is not some critique of the Disney conglomerate in the film: the refugee humans on the space shuttle Axiom are essentially trapped in a theme park, sedated by an endless stream of diversionary entertainment. But companies like Disney and Pixar are directly implicated in producing the very media content that keeps consumers in thrall. It remains to be seen whether such a subversive thread is the work of culture-jamming animators acting covertly and independently,(7) or whether the processes of global capitalism have become so advanced that Disney can actually now laugh at itself—all the way to the bank.(8)
REFERENCES
Balio, T. (1998). ‘A major presence in of all the world’s important markets’: The globalization of Hollywood in the 1990s. In S. Neale & M. Smith (Eds.), Contemporary Hollywood cinema. (Pp. 58-73). London: Routledge.
Bordwell, D. (2002). Intensified continuity: Visual style in contemporary American film. Film Quarterly, 55 (3), 16-28.
Hall, S. (2006). Blockbusters in the 1970s. In L. Williams & M. Hammond (Eds.), Contemporary American cinema. (Pp. 164-83). London: Open University Press.
King, G. (2000). Spectacular narratives: Hollywood in the age of blockbuster. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers.
King, G. (2002). New Hollywood cinema: An introduction. New York: Columbia University Press.
Schatz, T. (1993). The new Hollywood. In J. Collins, H. Radner & A. Preacher (Eds.), Film theory goes to the movies. (Pp. 8-36). New York: Routledge.
1. In societies such as Japan, however, animated films targeted at an adult marketed have long existed alongside those aimed at children. Animation films in Japan are less burdened by an association with ‘kiddie flicks’ or ‘family entertainment’.
2. Examples include prequels such as ‘The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning’(2008) and sequels such as ‘Aladdin and the King of Thieves’ (1996).
3. The practice has become more widespread, leading to the blurring of the distinction between actor and character in subsequent animated films—a mode of acting referred to as ‘personification’. Animators have even been known to model characters on actors’ physical features; examples include Jeremy Iron’s fatigued, aristocratic profile for the character of Scar in The Lion King (1994) and Eddie Murphy’s Mushu in Mulan (1998) and Donkey in Shrek (2001)—both toothy and goggle-eyed.
4. In addition, the cinematography is such that one can almost imagine a camera on a set, suspending disbelief that everything in the film is computer-generated. This is achieved by creating scenes that suggest an imperfect filming apparatus at work, through the use of lens flares, shallow depth-of-field and barrel distortions.
5. In art history terms, this is like skipping an entire phase of classical trompe-l'œil representation straight to the heart of the avant-garde.
6. Nods to Steve Jobs (Apple Inc CEO and Pixar’s main shareholder) come in the form of an iPod, the startup tune of a Mac (when Wall-E solar-charges himself) and Eve’s white burnished plastic skin.
7. There are some who believe that subliminal erotica has slipped into some of the films, smuggled in by disgruntled or mischievous animators. An example is the word ‘SEX’ that appears in the dust when the lion Simba lays down in The Lion King.
8. Domestic total gross for Wall-E, as of September 14 2008, is $220,090,317. Source: Box Office Mojo, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wall-e.htm
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| Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
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6:53 pm - is this love
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I realised from the tenderness of his gaze and under his touch a kind of essence I had carried inside me—the recognition of which made me feel vulnerable (I had let someone locate it) and invulnerable (I now knew where my centre was).
*sigh*
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| Sunday, August 17th, 2008
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10:22 pm - creative writing exercise
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Instructions: Write a story beginning with the phrase: 'My mother never...'
My mother never spoke about the baby to my father. In this manner she assumed ownership over it. As my belly swelled, my mother was also growing heavy with a secret. At forty-six, she was going to be the youngest among her sisters to become a grandmother.
I had not yet shown, since I was still in the first trimester. Or would it be more correct to say that the child was in its first trimester? I was frightened by this idea that we both shared the same time: my morning was his morning and my night was when his world shifted slightly, without his knowledge, as I lay down on my bed. We were parts of the same clock: I was the hour hand and he was the minute hand.
Sometimes I think of him as a bubble in a spirit level. Then I would get restless, tilting my body, adjusting my shoulders, twisting my flanks, lying down and getting up, as if I was trying for the perfect balance that would place him dead centre.
My mother was heavier with him than I was. If he was a ball bearing of air in my body, in hers he was a pair of legs. When he kicked she would suddenly blurt out, ‘Have you thought of a name for him?’ The question startled me since we had not even begun to discuss if I was going to keep him. I kept quiet. What name? He’s a bubble, Mak. He is a bubble slowly filling with breath.
In nursing school they taught us how dangerous it was to have an air bubble traveling down an IV drip. It could develop into what is known as an air embolism, a lethal pocket of nothingness that could stop the heart. Or maybe the warning was against air bubbles down a catheter. What harm would that cause? An inflated bladder? The bladder is a balloon, the heart a pump, the lungs bellows, and the kidneys a pair of coffeemakers. But what to make of this thing inside me where all these machines were being copied, day by day, like toy miniatures?
I knew a day will come when I will catch up with my mother. The child will force itself to take its place not only in my body but in the world. My belly will form a dent in space. The minute hand will outpace the hour hand and demand its own time.
Marriage was out of the question. The boy who is his father said to me: ‘A nineteen year old father is the beginning of a broken family.’ He said nothing about broken nineteen year old mothers. Once during our ward rounds I caught him casting a look at my belly. Ever since I broke the news to him I had become invisible to him. But now he looked at me as if I was a glass tank, filled with exotic fish. I buttoned up my cardigan and stared at him. He never looked at my belly after that. He never looked at me again.
When I first told my mother about the child, the first thing she said was, ‘you know it’s a sin.’ It was sin to have conceived a child out of wedlock. But that was not what she meant. I knew from her eyes that what she was saying was, ‘it’s a sin to kill the child.’ But Mak, that’s assuming it has an existence apart from me. It occupies space within space, but not a time within time. Its time will come only when it has left my body. But does the hour hand follow the minute hand or the other way round?
I am in a clinic and my legs are spread. That’s how I imagine it. It’s not killing Mak, it’s stopping time because I am unable to turn back the clock. Another thing I try to imagine: the sound of a bubble bursting, beyond the range of my hearing, no sound at all.
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| Friday, August 15th, 2008
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4:17 pm - in plain speech
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I forgot the sound of your voice.
I forgot your birthday.
I forgot when I first started to think of you.
I forgot when I finally stopped thinking of you.
I forgot how old you were this year.
I forgot why I cried.
I forgot the colour of your spectacles.
I forgot how you looked beside me in a cab.
I forgot those raised eyebrows, which made you appear both superior and nonchalant, and which used to annoy me.
I forgot where you lived.
I forgot what I borrowed from you or lent to you.
I forgot the pauses in our telephone conversations.
I forgot the film we watched together.
I forgot the distribution of your baby stubble.
I forgot why I stayed up late to talk to you.
I forgot the deadpan way you fabricated stories.
I forgot which email, sms, or msn sentence finally did it.
I forgot why your bad grammar never irked me.
I forgot what kinds of shoes you wore.
I forgot why I thought of you first thing in the morning.
I forgot where I last saw you or spoke to you.
I forgot what your presence was like, now I think you were a white shirt.
I forgot how random some of your jokes were.
I forgot the buzz of anticipation before meeting you.
I forgot how I imagined your surroundings when you were overseas, maybe wet cobblestones and red leaves.
I forgot why I handed in my essay late just so I could proofread yours.
I forgot the numbness afterwards, which spread from the heart, or maybe froze everything but the heart.
I forgot why it happened.
I forgot on which wrist you wore your watch, or even if you wore one at all.
I forgot why I let you.
I forgot the sound of your laughter.
I forgot why I ever let it happen.
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| Monday, August 4th, 2008
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2:55 pm - back to skool
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School started today. I really want to do a Creative Writing elective module over at the School of Humanities. They're doing short stories, and it'll be a great space for me to develop my in-the-making-never-ending second short story collection. That romanticised idea of being an unfettered writer--master of one's own deadlines--ultimately means being slave to the indefinite (for my case at least).
I want:
Ma Huaqi (University of Queensland, Australia):
“Writing Nature in an Urban Present: Ecopoetic Perspectives on Contemporary Australian and Singaporean Poetry through Sam Wagan Watson and Alfian bin Sa’at”
Lim Lee Ching (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
“Voices of Inauthenticity: Singaporean-ness and English in the Poetry of Alfian Sa’at and Cyril Wong”
Washima Che Dan (Universiti Putra Malaysia)
"Diaspora at Home? The Diasporic Singapore Malay in Alfian Saat's Short Stories"
Note the three different versions of my name. Maybe I should do a Fernando Pessoa and adopt heteronyms. I had a pseudonym for 'Love Gathers All' called Tim Han--my little private joke; 'Tim' was the acronym for 'The Invisible Manuscript', an unpublished collection that the poems were taken from, 'Han' was the surname of the protagonist in Johann S. Lee's 'Peculiar Chris'. I know some of the eds of that anthology were ahem not happy when they eventually found out.
Anyway, do come down for this if you're free:
Sunday, 10th August 2008
Venue: Drama Centre, Function Room 3, National Library Building
Time: 5.30pm – 7pm
Admission: FREE
LIFE: Regardless of Race: Uncomfortable Silences, Unfounded Fears
ART: The Swordfish, then The Concubine, Angel-ism
Why are race and religion such taboo topics in Singapore? How has Singapore theatre contributed to ongoing debates about race, language, religion and ethnicity?
In what ways have the idea of four official race limited our understanding of one another?
Should we start speaking about a Singaporean race?
Panelists:
· Kok Heng Leun – Artistic Directors, Drama Box
· Aidli ‘Alin’ Mosbit – Artistic Director, panggung ARTS
· Constance Singam – President, Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE)
· Lim Kean Bon – Graduate student and author of Performing Whose Identity?: Singapore Malay Theatre and the Politics of Malayness
· Dr Kenneth Paul Tan – Assistant Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, author of Cinema and Television in Singapore: Resistance in One Dimension
Moderator:
· Alfian Sa’at – Resident Playwright, W!LD RICE, and Dramaturg, OCBC Singapore Theatre Festival 08
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| Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
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6:28 am - dickinson's genius
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There is a pain -- so utter --
It swallows substance up --
Then covers the Abyss with Trance --
So Memory can step
Around -- across -- upon it --
As one within a Swoon --
Goes safely -- where an open eye --
Would drop Him -- Bone by Bone.
Emily Dickinson
I don't know of any other passage that describes that kind of emotionless automatism so precisely--the kind of invulnerability that insists that the present cannot inflict any injury, because the present simply does not exist. What exists is the absolute sovereignty of the past.
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| Thursday, July 31st, 2008
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3:30 pm - doesn't sound like a psychopath to me
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Closing statement by Chee Soon Juan in court with Lee Kuan Yew
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Your Honour,
This case has been one fraught with acrimony and controversy. Many legal points have been raised, some of which I have understood, others have completely bewildered me. But all the points raised centred around one subject: Whether there was malice when we published that NKF article.
Let me deal with this point. It is clear as daylight that the plaintiffs sued not because their reputations were tarnished but that it was a way to stop our campaigning over the issue during the elections.
Instead of letting the public decide, they have dragged the courts in and insisted that the courts adjudicate in a matter where it should not. In the process, they put the courts in an untenable and unenviable position. This is a tragedy that history will not kindly look upon.
But a court case is what we have and court cases are about seeking the truth and allowing that truth to surface.
As I pointed out, the question centres around whether there was malice on our part.
I cannot deny that I get angry and even bitter with Mr Lee Kuan Yew over the things that he has said and done to me and others. But through the years, I have seen the bigger picture and developed a sense of calm and equanimity that comes with knowing my role in society.
And because I feel at ease, I don't hate Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Lee Hsien Loong. I don't wish them ill in anyway despite all that they have done and continue to do to me and my family.
I harbour no hatred towards Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Lee Hsien Loong, much less any malice.
To hate my opponents would drag me down to their level of rancour and deceit which has no place in what we're trying to achieve for Singapore. I find it too draining and distracting to harbour those emotions.
My Christian faith guides me and it is a faith that compels me to fght for justice and to treat my fellow men and women with compassion.
Mr Lee tempts and taunts me to get out of bankruptcy and get back into the stream of political life that he sits as lord and master. Believe me, in such an environment it is a temptation that can be overpowering.
What I said to Mr Lee Kuan Yew during the cross-examination is exactly where I stand. I feel sorry for him but I don't hate him.
But I also told him that ultimately it isn't about him. Neither is it about his son, and it most certainly is not about me. It is about this country and the people who live in it.
It is about what is just. It is about compassion and how we treat our fellow men. It is about freedom and human dignity.
A society stripped bare of these virtues is a society unable to embrace humanity. A society without humanity is a thought too frightening to entertain.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew kept on repeating how he built up this country and how much he has stored in the reserves. That is the tragedy of the man. For all his intelligence, he does not possess the wisdom of life.
Because unlike reputation, character cannot be bought. A true statesmen will not need to fight for his reputation, for that will shine through even after he takes his final bow and leaves the stage of life. His name will linger on and be writ large fondly in the hearts of many for generations to come.
Many lies have been spread about truly great leaders. And yet these lies have never been able to snuff out the greatness in these individuals. On the contrary, their legacy grows in size and intensity.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew fights all his demons within himself to try to shore up his reputation. In the process, however, he destroys the very legacy that he so desperately desires to establish.
When he pulled out the citation from Transparency International Malaysia and tried to use it as an endorsement of his integrity it, frankly, surprised me because it showed me how empty Mr Lee's life has become.
Such an intelligent man and yet so utterly devoid of wisdom. Can he not understand that no paper, no award, no citation can ever hope to still the voices of those who see the truth behind the propaganda?
I take no joy in pointing out to him how TIM is not an established, well-grounded institution on which one can take pride in being awarded a citation especially on the subject on integrity. In fact, I felt bad to point that out because it seemed that it was all the MM was clinging to.
Mr Lee must understand that integrity cannot, and does not, come from the grandiloquence of one's speech, it must shine forth from the righteousness of one's heart. If that light of righteousness is dim, no amount of persuasion will brighten it.
Can he not grasp the fact that no amount of wealth and power can hold back the silent voices forever? When he is no longer with us in this world, no amount of suppression can hold back the vehemence of his critics.
I hope he takes the little time that he has left to ponder what I have said and to turn from his ways. It is not too late.
Over the last couple of days in court I have observed, as have many here, how those around him treat him with such servitude that made my hair stand on end. For whatever reason, they go out of their way to show him their subservience.
They are doing him a disservice by not telling him that he needs to amend his ways if he so desires to uphold his integrity. Maybe he has chosen to surround himself with these yes-people. Either way Mr Lee is moving in life's wrong direction.
Which brings me to the damages. I stand by everything I have written in the article in The New Democrat about the NKF as it relates to the running of this country because it is the truth and Mr Lee and the rulers of this country must always hear the truth no matter how inconvenient that truth may be.
I know what I say now will not make a difference in terms of damages.
I willingly assume the position in this life because if this is the path that God has chosen for me then I cannot run away.
I can leave this country or I can capitulate and join what others have done in politics under the PAP. I will do neither. For to me my own integrity is at stake and that cannot be paid for in dollars.
Mr Lee may try to tempt me out of bankruptcy but it will not work. I may remain a bankrupt for the rest of my life as a result of my obstinacy. It is not a position one aspires to but it is a cause I find worthy of battle and a call, though sometimes I may resist, I will ultimately trust and obey.
So, Your Honour, we have come to the stage where all of us will be held to account for what we do today. It is said that as we make our bed, so shall we lie in it.
What we do today will live on in history forever. I do not envy your position. I ask that you forgive me if I have offended you in a personal way. I had no intention of doing that. In another place and time, we would be perhaps be good friends.
But I have to take issue with your position as a Judge and what you have done as well as the decisions you have made in this courtroom. To that extent I will fight you with every fibre of my being for the sake of justice.
We all have decisions to make in life. I have made mine and I am at ease with it. You have yours to make. I wish you wisdom and honesty.
Thank you.
CHEE SOON JUAN
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| Saturday, July 26th, 2008
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3:30 am - R(A), A(R)
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Restricted (Artistic) and Art (Restricted) – what should an underground art space in Singapore do?
Panelists: Alfian Sa’at, John Low, Junaidi Waee and founders of Furor Space - Rubin Deadfingers and Uan; moderated by Ooi Can Seng
Synopsis: When the authorities introduced the Restricted (Artistic) category to the classification of movies in Singapore , the classification system affirms the view that art movies should have more leeway to experiment than “normal” movies. But artistic expressions, in all other countries, are restricted to a certain extent. In Singapore , religious, ethnic and political issues must be handled in a “responsible” manner. Artists in Singapore have to ensure that their use of violence, nudity and sex is not gratuitous. Furor Space is an exciting art initiative. But what does it mean to be an underground art space in Singapore ?
Venue: Furor Space, 26A Haji Lane (off Arab street )(5-minute walk from Bugis MRT)
Date: Saturday, 26 July 2008,
Time: 8 - 9pm
I had an interview today with a Singaporean sociologist based in Copenhagen, called Ooi Can Seng. He's moderating the forum above. Swing by if you're free; it's at Haji Lane. : )
When we were done, Boo joined us for a while. Can Seng took a photo of us for documentation. I'm 58 kg. Why do I always look so fat in photos? Gah. Melbaby once taught me, when you take a photo with someone, be the guy who's posing behind; that way the guy in front will look fatter. Does. Not. Work!
In the space of a month I've met some very interesting people. One is a Laotian, and the other a Singaporean who lives near me. I love crashing at the latter's pad--he's well read and and it resurrects all my idealised notions of having a friend I could do sleepovers with, discussing literature and philosophy. And Laotian guy has really sparked an interest in Indochina--that part of SE-Asia that's so remote to me. I have to admit, to my utter shame, that I had no idea which were the countries which bordered Laos. Now at least it's not so shadowy anymore--basic things like why Thailand remained independent, why the Isan area in Northeast Thailand has many Lao speakers, why landlocked Laos depended so much on Vietnamese patronage, why an alliance between the French and the British (to counter Germany's rising power) eventually resulted in the demarcation of Laotian territory. Maybe we should conduct our own backpacking Grand Tours of SE-Asia, the way European students have their Grand Tours of Europe. Who's game? : )
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| Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
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9:28 am - winners of this month's 'caption this!' contest
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3:42 am - all that sustains (2)
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The overnight train to St Petersburg. Tony actually booked four tickets so we could have a compartment all to ourselves. From the outside...
And from the inside. I took a bed at the top while the other two took beds below. It was a very comfortable ride, from the new capital to the old. It so happened that the time we were going there was a peak season for holidays--the White Nights and the World Economic Forum meant that hotel occupancy was very tight. But dear Tony managed to find us a room near the Neva Prospekt, which is the main artery of the city centre.
This is a church...of Our Lady Of Kazan. Devotees are queueing up to kiss an icon, which supposedly can grant wishes. Sceptic in me thinks a wish that is likely to be granted is 'I want whatever germs the person in front of me is carrying.'
The interior of the Church of The Spilled Blood, with mosaic tiles painstakingly assembled to illustrate scenes from the New Testament.
The glittering Mariinsky theatre, where we watched Puccini's 'Tosca'.
The set for the third and final act, where Tosca throws herself down from a roof after realising that her lover had been shot. Like most operas, the production design was grandiloquent, with a tilted stage in this case made to look like marble and towering doors and windows. A very clever idea for the roof--the reverse of the word 'Roma'--which means Rome, but which is also the root word for love in Italian when read backwards.
Just a short walk from our hotel was the Palace Square.
There was this plinth with an angel residing at the top. From a certain angle you could catch the sun behind it and when you moved a little the sun would peep out and blind you. Verrrrry drrrrama.
The Hermitage Museum, which used to be the retreat for Catherine the Great. I doubt it's an exaggeration to say that it's one of the most beautiful museums in the world.
I always have a soft spot for Matisse...
And here's a roomful of Picassos. They even have a wall with a collection from his Blue Period.
OK could not resist doing this with Botero's sculpture. I've never quite taken to Botero's aesthetics of corpulence though...which sometimes strikes me as gimmicky. On the other hand, I find myself very moved by Giacometti's stick-thin elongated figures, and also Modigliani's long-necked, empty-eyed wraiths.
At the Hermitage, we also watched 'Giselle'. The prima ballerina had such amazing, amazing presence. The scene where she goes crazy and dies was executed with such subtlety, such delicate shifts, that it was heart-rending to witness the transformation. For me, it was all in the eyes--from the moment when Giselle learns that she has been betrayed, you start seeing pain flooding her eyes, the incomprehension, the haunted stare.
And of course, what are travel photographs without the obligatory hotel bathroom shots? Here I am with a hat from the souvenir market.
Actually it was Alex who asked for it. And of course he and Melbaby carry it off so well. Haha. Here they are re-enacting a scene from a Soviet era propaganda poster. I'll have to say the second picture below is better because Alex has a natural motherly presence.
Talking about mothers, this is my real mum, who I brought along to Stockholm in late June. It was an early birthday treat for her. Here she is with who she called 'Swedish boyfriend number 1' and 'Swedish boyfriend number 2'. Oklah I update more Swedish pics another day.
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| Monday, July 21st, 2008
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11:34 pm - that which sustains (1)
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My birthday actually began a good one and a half months ago, when Ivan and Tony brought me to St Petersburg. We were all in Moscow for a performance which Ivan directed, based on Iskandar Ismail's music, called 'Generation/s'. I was the writer/dramaturg for some of the scenes in the production. As an early birthday gift, Ivan decided to bring me on an all-expenses paid tour to St Petersburg.
Moscow is reputed to have some of the most beautiful underground train stations in the world, and it's a good way for you to get acquainted with the Cyrillic alphabet. After a while you start recognising the signs for 'exit', for example, and when you're walking around on your own, you know it's a do-or-die situation to have some basic literacy. Asking for directions is pretty much out of the question. When I was in Moscow, I realised that not a lot of Russians speak English at all, and the response you're likely to get when you utter some English is this scowl-shrug hybrid--which means 'I don't know' and also 'I don't care' and a bit of 'you're in the former Soviet Union and you can't speak Russian what do you mean you have a Mongoloid face and even Mongolians speak Russian.' Sometimes I wonder whether it was actually offensive to these Russians that I even spoke in English--the triumph of Anglo-American global capitalism spitting in their faces.
The trains are efficient, but also brutally so. They actually arrive at intervals of one to two minutes on average, these noisy juggernauts clashing along the rails. At each stop, you have this window of opportunity to wriggle your way into the train compartment before the doors slice shut like lateral guillotine blades. You really can't be sluggish about it; once Ivan, Tony and me got separated from Gani as the no-nonsense doors popped the conversation gumbubble we were languidly blowing in the air. We had to resort to geticulating across the glass, telling Gani to alight at the next station and wait for us; it was a scene straight out of prison visiting hour, a watchful warden calling time, time! It might have been my own stereotype, but there was something martial/militaristic about the whole affair. I know it's supposed to be new Russia and all, but every time I see one of those Soviet murals I can't help but hear strains of a baritone men's choir.
And this is the inside of a train, with Ivan and his seating companion. After a few minutes the guy decided he needed more space and stretched out his leg, displacing Ivan off his seat and demonstrating yet another instance of Muscovite hospitality.
In the train, with musicians from the production. Two Chinese orchestra musicians and one rock guitarist. I like talking to musicians, because at some point it's no longer theory but 'tangkap feel...jamming...give and take...you're one with the band' etc.
To get to the train stations you often had to go down an escalator--a loooong one, maybe around 4 storeys or so. This is because most of the stations were also designed as backup nuclear shelters. This is the crew of 'Generation/s' on their way out of one such bunker. I have no idea what people do when the escalators break down. If it were me I'd just camp overnight lah, I'm that lazy.
And here's a busload of the crew, on our way back from Dom Muziky--the venue for the production. Boy, do they have a lot to say about working with Russian crew...
Ah, a red dusk at the Red Square. There are lines from Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' which we used in 'Generation/s' which I thought suited this picture...
TUZENBACH: ...Migratory birds, cranes for example, keep on flying and flying, and no matter what thoughts wander into their heads, whether they are sublime or petty it is no matter, they will still keep on flying and not know why they are flying or where they are flying to. They fly and will keep on flying whatever philosophers might be born amongst them; and let them philosophise, as much as they wish, as long as they keep on flying…
MASHA. But what is the meaning of it?
TUZENBACH. The meaning… Look, it is snowing. What is the meaning of that?
At night you can see the red star of the Kremlin tower glowing.
I remember when I was younger thinking that St Basil's cathedral was actually a mosque--because of the onion dome cupolas which I mistook for minarets. Russian eclectic style was still alien to me. This is it at night...
And in the evening--magic hour lighting--in Moscow at that time, probably around 9 pm? For me the cathedral is so iconic that being in its vicinity was surreal--I could walk around its perimeter and touch the walls but it was still somewhat remote, ethereal. One could only get so close to it. Walter Benjamin has talked about works of art losing their aura as a result of mechanical reproduction, but I wonder if the opposite also happens, that something acquires an aura precisely because of its circulation in the global imagination. OK which probably brings us to Baudrillard and simulacra and these are holiday pics dammit so we'll skip that and go to...
Very atas buskers near the Red Square. Playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons, if I wasn't mistaken. If you're Singaporean you'll probably think aiyoh so many people go and play then how they divide the money??? But I'd like to think that it was the pleasure of playing together that made them busk in a group--that and a fidelity to the score in a country which takes its classical music very seriously.
Soldiers-troops-Russian militarism-OK I know it's a well-worn stereotype; I probably won't see a lot of soldiers in the suburbs. This is, after all, near the Red Square. But it's such a stubborn stereotype--it pops up in porn all the time, anyway. : P
And that red building they were marching past is a museum of State History. I love those peaks painted white so they look like they're snow-capped.
Near the Red Square there was this fountain which showed a partial map of the world.
And there's Singapore, right at the tip of the Equator. And that's how it's spelled in Cyrillic: Сингапур (Singapur). I'm not sure if the map only covers the Northern Hemisphere though, didn't go round to check. I don't read the Straits Times much these days, but I've chanced across a few articles that mention how countries like China and Russia are keen to learn from Singapore--especially in the field of governance. And with no sense of irony (or shame) at all; it's actually spoken of as a matter of pride--these big countries learning from Singapore--the city council turned city-state! I mean, come on, how much more of an evil island can you become--hanging and whipping criminals, producing landmines, selling technology to Myanmar, getting Israelis to train your military, and Apartheid-era South Africans to train your Intelligence Services, and then now imparting know-how to two countries with the most dastardly records of repressing their people! Anyone who can say that he or she is proud to be Singaporean should really make a police report for a missing social conscience. I really shudder to think of a Singaporean brand of authoritarian capitalism being exported to the rest of the world--if the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy isn't doing that already. : (
Here's a photo I took of a rehearsal of the production. From way behind, where I was operating the surtitles. I don't think I like doing technical support for a production, and that's not from a rarefied artists-don't-touch-cables position. I found that I could never really lose myself in the work--instead it was segmented into a set of cues, which I was supposed to respond to. The work--the live performance--was no longer about the organic passage of time, but of mechanical timing. OK lah, I really don't like pressing buttons simultaneously on two different laptops...because I feel like an automaton with right and left brain functions. Anything that reminds me of the fact that I have a brain is very weird to me; it's like the mind thinking of itself, and then I think of consciousness and chemicals and then get a headache, which makes it worse because it's mental activity resulting in physical symptoms and...gah.
I have no brain. The End. OK. Phew! Another production photo, of Gana playing the flute. We had such an eclectic bunch of musicians, who later performed on stage with a Russian string ensemble.
Kai Syng, the videographer, and Swee Lin. I'm in a Bibik sandwich.
Swee Lin is hilarious. I had a wonderful time with her, Ivan and Tony on our last day in Moscow. By the way, she called the hotel we were staying in 'Casinoland'. She also called it a 'Reformatory', because at around 12 noon, which was check out time, a matronly chambermaid barged into her room, glared at her sternly and huffily pointed at the door. And Swee Lin screamed, 'No! YOU get out! How dare you! I'm in my underwear and you just come in without knocking!'
Here it is from the outside. See the sign that says 'PECTOPAH'? That means restaurant in Russian. There was a casino on the first floor and also a strip club. Some of the musicians went there and said something to the effect of 'the stripper's labia looks like a cow's' and other unmentionables.
And this is the interior. Please behold the aesthetics: matching leopard-print carpet and curtain. I thought I had the luck of being given the Shaka Zulu theme room, but apparently everyone else on my floor had ther own safari sweet dreams too.
And here's me, Ivan and Tony in front of Anton Chekhov's statue, near the Moscow Art Theatre. And later in the evening my two angels would take me on a train ride to St Petersburg. : )
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6:07 pm - 31 is a prime number
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My dearest friends,
I know I'm not the easiest friend to be with. Sometimes I don't answer your phone calls or messages, I have terrible moods, and I go into deep and unpredictable periods of seclusion--not a very difficult thing these days, as you've realised, precisely because of our dependence on technology to register someone's presence. One doesn't need a cave--all you have to do is glance at emails without answering them, turn your phone to silent mode, choose to be invisible on msn.
The butt-ugly photo above is a document of a nadir...the eyebags and moustache are the marks of one who preferred drawn curtains and a sleeping position where he would face the wall, as if this meant turning his back to the world. You have been nothing but patient with me, tirelessly asking me out, sending me a wallet in the mail after a pickpocket robbed me in St Petersburg. In the mail! Was I so adamantly homebound that a postman had to deliver a package to my door?
To see all of you at one go on my 31st birthday was a wonderful gift. I have been prone to some outlandish tics of late, like a blanket denunciation of film, at the risk of alienating friends whose very art is film. I have been guilty of a kind of blind threshing, sometimes hurting those dear to me, like a clumsy suicide bomber who accidentally sets off a bomb in his own home. To counter bitterness I chose to feel nothing. But you cannot feel nothing for something or someone and expect not to feel nothing for everything else. The anaesthetic, unfortunately, is general, not local. A few nights ago I was at a friend's house, watching a clip from 'Before Sunset' on Youtube. And Ethan Hawke's character goes, 'You can't live your life trying to avoid pain.'
And so, once again, thanks for sticking around...thank you for all the birthday wishes and the lurrrrrve. There are too many names to mention and if I list them all I'll inevitably miss out a few. And thank you for the presents! Haha. And here they are: 2 graphic novels (by Adrian Tomine and Bill Willingham), one novel (by Andre Aciman), one CD (Stephen Sondheim's 'Into The Woods'), one Fred Perry bag and a pair of Onitsuka Tiger shoes. Oh, and a sun jar right in the centre...
Which collects sunlight in the day and turns it into moonglow when it is dark. : ) Also, the next time I try growing facial hair, be nice and tell me I look like a Malaysian pirate taxi driver.
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| Friday, July 18th, 2008
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3:24 am - the speech i wanted to write for nick in abv3
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(but didn't know how to then)
"Take me. I don't belong to anyone. The one I want to belong to doesn't want me. I'm nobody's. I'm nobody. Take everything you want. Don't leave anything behind. Don't try saving some for tomorrow. There's no tomorrow. There's only now and this body. They're yours."
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| Saturday, July 12th, 2008
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2:38 pm - going going gone
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It all started from a forwarded email. An impersonal two-liner, sounding me out on a book which I might be interested in contributing to. But why make such an assumption? The dismay...who is this person? What kind of self-deception led me to believe this person once knew me on a plane deeper than most? Why do we lie to ourselves? And so I thought: this is it. Dispense with the contrivance that things are as they have always been. Something has changed, fundamentally. No complicated footwork: just a single step from being inconsolable to being implacable.
And thus has ended my brief flirtation with the study of cinema. Not for me film scholarship--a necrophiliac act, the love of images repeatedly shot to perfectability--in other words, an embalment. To watch a film is to partake of a thing literally done to death--the tedious retakes, the Franskenstein crypt of the editing room, the non-existence of that which flickers on the screen. There are dead people on screen, none on the stage. Cinema does not immortalise--it mummifies. The hubris of wanting to preserve corruptible celluloid. Theatre has no such illusions. It knows it is ephemeral--no two performances are ever alike. And when I watch a video recording of a play I know something has died.
And with that, three quotes from Tom Stoppard's Arcadia:
******
Valentine: You can't run the film backwards. Heat was the first thing which didn't work that way. Not like Newton. A film of a pendulum, or a ball falling through the air -- backwards, it looks the same. ... But with heat -- friction -- a ball breaking a window -- ... it won't work backwards. ... You can put back the bits of glass but you can't collect up the heat of the smash. It's gone. ... The heat goes into the mix ... And everything is mixing the same way, all the time, irreversibly.
******
Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
Septimus: No.
Thomasina: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
Septimus: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever.
******
Lady Croom: It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
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| Thursday, July 10th, 2008
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9:06 am - it's really ok
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| Saturday, July 5th, 2008
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5:28 pm - baaaaack
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I'm back. Stockholm was beautiful. There's so much work to be done.
If there's one thing to learn from the Swedish it's to dispose of the fat and retain only the necessary.
There are many extraneous things in my life. Deadweight.
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| Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
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7:40 am - doldrums byebye
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I eat one meal a day, sleep at 9 am, wake up at 6 pm.
I haven't shaved, haven't been out of the house in days, all I do is read and write and read and write.
A few days ago, I received a package in my mail. It was signed by 10 dear friends. A card said 'SMILE!' Inside was a wallet--to replace the one I lost at St Petersburg, and a Muji camera.
And just recently, we celebrated Ash's birthday. I am glad I came late, because I managed to stay out of most of the photos. The one taken by Jason made everyone a red-eyed animal at the Night Safari, while the Polaroids look like they should be in a Tracey Emin artwork. I saw one with the candles half-melted on the cake--it was hilarious. The candles looked like stalagmites.
And Junfeng drew a beautiful portrait of Ash as a baby. I also want to draw but I can only draw vixen.
I've had emails also from people I've never met in real life. But they have been an enormous source of comfort and solace.
I remember once Haresh telling me: "Your depression will not outlast the universe."
This morning I drew again. I have a semi-beard now. It is the ugliest thing I've seen, but maybe I'll let it grow so that it can gloat at Shou who took 3 weeks to grow his sliver of a moustache. Heh heh.
Anyway, inspired by Jason's Night Safari photos, I decided to doodle the following *ahem* tribute to my friends.
I was running out of space, so things got squeezy as I continued drawing.
The baBOOn isn't supposed to be so fat.
The panda isn't supposed to be so...ok it is.
I wanted to draw lioness but I really wanted the mane.
The lynx is twirling hair at the back of his head.
The wolf is 'mabuk already'.
The wolf and the vixen lying under the sheets is purely incidental; I was too lazy to draw hind legs.
At least three of my friends are rodent-identified.
I think the monkey comes closest to the actual subject.
All right, time to stretch and draw open the curtains.
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| Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
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2:25 am - zombie
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I'm sorry if I've been ignoring phone calls.
I don't know where I am right now, but I know it is far away from where I used to be.
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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5:47 am - self-pitying rabbit series 2
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| Friday, June 13th, 2008
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5:50 am - hermitage
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