Politically Correct in a Crazy World

Nowadays I'm kinda addicted to read the forums on the Straits Times,be it in the newspaper or onine,because it do helps me improve on my English.However,there's still a big room of improvement to brush up on my grammar and vocabulary.

The forum is also a good place to read all the wonderfully complains and comments.Some are interesting reads,while others may just make a joke out of themselves.

I shall now quote a so-called complain of the week before it's gone:

All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act

I turned to the cinema pages of the Life! Section in the Straits Times last Saturday and noted the sort of movies being shown in town.

The main themes focussed on violence, crime, death and sex. Here are some of the movies:

. The Black Dahlia - about Hollywood's most infamous sex murders;

. Dead man's shoes - about revenge;

. Silk - about spirits;

. Death Note - about death;

. The Departed - a crime drama;

. Wet hot sake - about sex, sleaze and sensuality;

. My Summer of Love - more sex and sleaze.

The other movies are about inconsequential events. These are time-wasters and sad to watch:

. Talladega Nights - about brainless and crazy people with fast cars;

. World Trade Centre - a disaster;

. Rob -B-Hood - no theme.

These movies do not provide any wholesome and meaningful lessons in life. The more a person watches them, the more he would be made to feel that life is hopeless and meaningless.

Movie directors are happily ripping off the public by giving us worthless movies that harm us. It is useless to bar only children and those below 18 from watching these movies as the tasteless pictures in the media continue to defile good sense and morals.

Where are our educators? Why are they silent on this sad state of affairs? What does our conscience tell us about such movies being screened in public? Do we have a conscience at all?

One may argue that we have a choice not to watch these shows. But if it Hobson's choice everyday with such low quality movies, where is the freedom for one to choose a wholesome and good movie when none is available?

What about the public's right to see good movies? And why do we create for ourselves a famine of morally enriching shows?

A movie that is worthwhile watching would give hope to the viewer about the meaning of life and its purpose.

A good movie should result in stirring a person's mind and heart to do good for society. It should focus on wholesome family values of love and care, and respect for the elders and the government.

How should we rate a movie for its value? We should not give ratings to reflect its popularity based on violence, crime and sex, but instead focus on good values such as kindness, gentleness, love, peace, goodness, faithfulness, self-control and joy.

Unfortunately, none of these good values can be found in the movies mentioned above.

Movies that espouse the desirable values are rare. These are 'Chariots of Fire' and 'Akeelah and the Bee'. I particularly enjoy watching Jack Neo's portrayal of our primary school system in 'I not stupid'.

Yet if it remains only a portrayal of our country's meritocratic education system, it alone would not be able to help us make further progress.

It is not enough just to point out society's ills. The movie's director should have concluded the show with lessons on corrective measures for the public.

I would like the Board of Film Censors to critically review and evaluate the quality of the movies currently being screened in public.

The guiding principle of the authority should always be driven by good and responsible values that promote hope, compassion and love.

And it should not be influenced by the public's lust for sex, violence and death that leads to a sense of hopelessness for the viewer.

George Lim Heng Chye

Because of this,people try to bombard him in defence:

Call in the censors? Please don't let art be a white-washing machine

I refer to the letter by Mr George Lim Heng Chye "All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act" (ST Online Forum Oct 17).

I am appalled at the crude generalizations made about the films he mentioned.

I wonder if Mr Lim had watched every one of them before passing his moralistic judgments.

If films cannot have themes such as crime, murder, disasters, spirits, sex (issues which are not at all unrealistic), if films are prohibited from presenting so-called "ugly" truths of life, if films function only to stem our imaginative indulgences, what will we have then?

My guess: A cinematic world that is dreadfully unimaginative, absolutely unrealistic, frightfully plain and ultimately deadening to the senses. It'll be a repression of alternative perspectives, a papering over different ways of interpreting the world, and repressing even our very own lust.

I have yet to comprehend why Mr Lim thinks WTC is an inconsequential event that belongs to the category of "time-wasters" and is "sad to watch". It is clearly a landmark event in contemporary political history. Yet Mr Lim thinks of this film that promotes values such as altruism, patriotism and courage as "worthless" and "tasteless".

He writes, "These movies do not provide any wholesome and meaningful lessons in life. The more a person watches them, the more he would be made to feel that life is hopeless and meaningless."

Mr Lim's appreciation of films clearly does not stretch far. Most films have plots with very positive and happy endings that promote optimism in the face of adversity.

A glance at the films of the last decade would suffice as evidence.

I do not claim to love and praise every single film as I have my own list of "trashy" and "worthless" films as well. Yet I do not stand at the gates of morality screaming and demanding that my conception of screen-worthiness be the norm.

That Mr Lim sees films as portraying life as hopeless and meaningless only serves to reveal his inability to read the subtext in an artistic work, his lack of critical thought, his disregard of the hidden messages in films, and most of all, his lack of appreciation for complexity, self-reflexivity and moral diversity.

His idea that good movies should be explicitly moral and clean shows an inability to understand commentary, subtlety and irony.

He chooses censorship to deal with perceived subversive content instead of allowing artistic dialogue to generate fruitful discussions on social reality and moral dilemmas.

In doing so, he bulldozes the entertainment landscape with his sweeping opinions.

By the way, I think one of the key messages in his favorite film "I Not Stupid" by Jack Neo is precisely to point out some of the unintended consequences of streaming primary school students and it is dedicated less to glorifying the meritocratic system.

In fact, one of the scenes in the movie portrays a student attempting suicide. By Mr Lim's puritanistic criteria, shouldn't this movie be dumped into the rubbish bin of meaningless and unwholesome films too?

His notions of "corrective measures" unseat me. As much as I agree with him that there are values we ought to cherish as a society, I dread the day when cinematic art becomes a white-washing moral mechanism.

I fear the day when Singaporeans start to evaluate films in such a flat and one-dimensional fashion. The age-old problematic relationship between film and morality can be debated to no end.

It begs the question of whether anyone has a monopoly on moral values.

Censorship has to straddle carefully between allowing artistic diversity in entertainment and making moral decisions. It should not be used to champion a particular moral interpretation and put down another.

Also, an educator educates his or her students by engaging them in constructive conversation, not by tying blindfolds on them.

Miss Lim Li Yin

And this guy uses good English that I can learn from:

A movie needn't be vehicle for morality. Just enjoy art and learn from it too

I refer to the online forum letter "All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act" in which the writer deprecates films that ostensibly fail from a moral standpoint. It calls for the censors to expurgate them from our society.

The value of films does not necessarily serve some moral or didactic purpose and as an art form, it should be as valuable as art in its pursuit.

That said, films should not be considered morally subversive either, even when they contain such elements in the story-telling process. In fact, they reflect our human condition, our society and culture, our personal beliefs, and they may be realistic and accurate. After all, the world we live in is not a bed of roses and all forms of art reflect this point to some degree.

One only needs to remember Shakespeare's King Lear where the tragic ending had been refashioned to suit the Restoration stage. This version by Nahum Tate has been criticised by modern critics for compromising the theme of tragedy. Although good eventually triumphs, there is a lack of poetic justice in the face of all the bloodshed and acrimony with Cordelia's demise.

Tragedy occurs everyday, sometimes through "the surfeit of own behaviour", sometimes the "disasters of the sun, the moon and the stars." In the same way, are we too afraid of this kind of reality that we have to blot truth like this from our audience?

The writer also expresses the view that morality is absolute, but perhaps this is a fallacious ideal. Art forces us to rethink our own perspectives.

Contrary to the writer's suggestion that it will lead to society's decadence, it will instead help us to understand humanity better.

Ultimately, a person creates a famine for himself if he persists in imposing his standards on others, especially when it comes to appreciation of the arts.

Jeremy Chua Jiakai

And who said forums are boring?

To Mr George Lim:

I believe you are very desperate for the censorship board to cut away all your "unnecessary details",but not all people think the same as you are.Meanwhile while you are waiting for Jack Neo to release your favorite "I Not Stupid 3,4 or 5",why not go watch some shows by the everloving purple dinosaur instead?