50 Years of PAP : Bye Bye MJ, Bye Bye Speaker’s Corner
I think Singapore’s opposition would do better if they were to hire a few celebrities to front their cause. When I attended the candlelight vigil upon the demise of a prominent member of the opposition – Joshua Benjamin Jeyaratnam – some months ago, I couldn’t help noticing that only about 50 or so people were attendance – whilst there was about a couple of hundred people attending a martial arts show a placard’s throw away in a well-built entertainment structure. I thought then, that placing a ‘Speaker’s Corner’ at such close proximity to an ‘entertainment centre’ said much about what the authorities might transmitting to the public about the place at a subconscious level – what I term, ‘the manipulation of the perspectival infrastructure’.
Perhaps, that is one of the reasons why the opposition tends to choose their leaders according to prominence as opposed to insight - A sort of ‘compromise’ as they aren’t able to get any more prominent celebrities in on the act. And in some sense, their penchant for prominence was complemented by the vigil for Michael Jackson in Singapore's 'Speaker's Corner' - as I've been saying for sometime, and being ignored whilst at it, if you laud prominence over insight, the generic idea of prominence is reinforced in the collective subconscious, and it can serve to undermine you in your worthy causes as people become attracted to the most prominent despite its significance.
And prominence wins the day again with the demise of the ‘King of Pop’ with a few hundred people attending the vigil for him at Singapore’s ‘Speaker’s Corner’. It seems that such events being held there fundamentally, by association, turns any other event held there into just one amongst an ‘entertaining’ itinerary. Sort of like slotting in Mickey Mouse ads in the commercial breaks between movies like Gandhi or Malcolm X. In that, Singapore’s ‘Speaker’s Corner’ is turned into a site wherein people can gather in large numbers for events instead of void decks and party halls. I suppose, given the publicity accorded the Speaker’s Corner in the past with regards to its political events, as opposed to void decks, the site is imbued with a greater ‘celebrity status’ than the said void deck or function halls which take its status from the event as opposed to the site itself being celebrated.
Hence, the Speaker’s Corner was, I believe, supposed to endow the entire ‘Kiss MJ’s ass goodbye’ event, even greater significance. We can see this as the relatively trivial appropriating the significance of the site for its own use, and thus compromising the sanctity of the environment as the last corner wherein people might organize oppositional events, or the last space, albeit minuscule, that stands against the government of the day. In this, the entire Speaker’s Corner, that night, was metaphorically ‘burnt in effigy’ (as are houses, cars, LV handbags, etc, in Chinese funerals) for MJ to take a stroll through in the afterlife. Quite appropriate, given that celebrities have generally contributed much to the depoliticisation of the citizenry in this ‘modern age’ by detracting them from the significance of responsible citizenship by serving as a means through which the masses might live their significance vicariously. With regards to the vigil for MJ in Speaker’s Corner, think, not imagine, along the lines of an orgy in Church and consider how the former compromises the sanctity of the latter by association and you’ll know what I mean. And when you put this together with the fact that the people who attend cause-related events are usually those whom are part of the cause as opposed to other members of the public or other interest groups, the meaning that the site is imbued with becomes clearer.
Given this event, I think the vigil for MJ was, unwittingly, one for the melting away of the final oppositional space in Singapore.
With the holding of the vigil for the demise of the ‘King of Pop’, I dare say, that the apt descriptor of Singapore’s ‘Speakers Corner’ ceases to be the ‘last site in Singapore wherein free speech may be practiced’.
Rather, Singapore’s ‘Speaker’s Corner’ can now be most accurately described as, ‘the place where everyone goes to mind their own business’, as do everyone without.
Ed
