志异 Draft by Drama box July 2014 (english) | Page 31

order to do that, he creates broad
archetypes of the population based
on the problems this population
faces on a daily basis. In so doing,
he reinforces these archetypes
in the audience’s mind; in being
already willing to identify with his
characters (a privilege Neo earned
through years of television work),
the audience accepts this image of
itself, claims the image as its own,
and feels a natural protectiveness
over it. This image gained its
power and credibility because it so
clearly stood in contrast to what the
government expected of the people
– the ‘cosmopolitan’ Standard
English-speaking, business-minded,
and cultured upper-middleclass; it
is the people’s own reaction to the
top-enforced inferiority complex
from which we intellectuals suffer.

comforts to ‘return to our roots,’ to
explore this precious identity that
makes us feel Singaporean again.
You can say this comes out of selflove, a desire to affirm one’s own
identity. But I think it comes from
insecurity, a fear that we aren’t
actually enough, that we need
someone else (an authority, either
cultural or political) to define us
to ourselves. In Singapore, this
‘someone else’ has traditionally
either been the media or the state
(which are often one and the
same). Neo’s films used to come as
a breath of fresh air because they
seemed to stand apart from how
the media stubbornly portrayed us.
But have they really been that
different? In the I Not Stupid films,
Neo tackles the streaming system
in our education structure. His
general conclusion is that these
underperforming students, who
have been generally ignored by
educators in favour of the ‘smarter’
students, eventually find their
place in society, becoming ‘useful’
people in the Confucian sense of
the word – every one, even the
poor and displaced, has his place in
society. In Neo’s Money No Enough
films, he satirises the greed of his
characters and affirms the need

That is the reason why Neo’s films,
save a few exceptions, have always
done well at the box-office. In an
overwhelming sea of Hollywood
and Hong Kong films, Neo’s films
seem to stand out as beacons of
Singaporean-ness in an otherwise
alienating cultural sphere. His films
are like Lent – after being subjected
to (and no doubt enjoying) a glut of
foreign films that assert a cultural
superiority over us, we forego our
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