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Preface
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- By Yao Souchou, University of Sydney
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- Book:
- House of Glass
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 23 July 2001, pp vii-viii
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Summary
The idea of this book was first explored in a two-day symposium organized at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, Singapore, in 1994 with financial support from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The purpose of the symposium — entitled “Problematizing Culture: Media, Identity, and the State in Southeast Asia” — was to examine the nature of media representation and politics of identity in the various nation-states in the region. However, by the end of the symposium, it became clear that two key issues had emerged as the central preoccupations of the participants: the predominant role of the state in the cultural and discursive realms, and the deployment of post-modern and post-structuralist theorizing in analysing local processes. I took the idea — and the inspirations — with me when I moved to the University of Sydney in October 1996, and commissioned additional contributions from among my new colleagues. On the whole, I have tried to maintain the critical vision as formulated in the symposium. The 1997 financial meltdown in Southeast Asia forced most of us to do another round of revisions to reflect recent developments.
The strength and insight of the book owe much to the contributors, and their goodwill and humour in graciously accepting my editorial suggestions and demands. I would also like to thank Chua Beng Huat, Ariel Heryanto, Michael Van Langenbach, and Sharrad Kutton for their stimulating input; and David Birch and Brian Shoesmith, who first planted in my mind the seed of a Southeast Asian Cultural Studies project. In Sydney, Mark Berger, Ien Ang, Helen Grace, and Richard Basham have been invaluable “fellow travellers”. I am most grateful to Ashley Carruthers and Phillip Mar for their editorial assistance and companionship, and Akaash, Neena, and Simryn for their patience. This project was funded by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, where I was a fellow from 1993 to 1996.
2 - Modernity and Mahathir's rage: theorizing state discourse of mass media in Southeast Asia
- from Part One - Local desire and global anxieties
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- By Yao Souchou, University of Sydney
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- Book:
- House of Glass
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 23 July 2001, pp 46-69
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- Chapter
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Summary
I have always loved television. Like many people addicted to the gentle habit, I have long realized that television viewing is not only pleasurable but is also good for the nerves. At the end of the day, after putting the children to bed, with a cold can of beer in my hand and sitting in front of the television, I am indeed a prince in my private realm. The exhaustion from the day's toil is imperceptibly dissolved in the realm of desire and fantasy. My enjoyment of television, however, is always mixed with a certain feeling of unease. There is often a sense that the pleasure of mass entertainment may deposit something unsound, something apocalyptic, that will act upon my consciousness when I am least aware of it. At the same time, even as I am deeply engrossed, there is a part of my mind telling me I should be doing something more worthwhile — maybe reading a book, or writing a letter to a friend. Perhaps it is also a question of self-image. As ambitious intellectuals we are not likely to openly confess the secret pleasure we take in watching Wheel of Fortune and the ideologically dubious Miami Vice, where the good guys and the bad guys are barely distinguishable in their Gorgio Amani suits and fast cars.
The clumsy reference to my ambiguous feeling towards television illustrates, if anything, how common is our suspicion of the enjoyment of the mass media. This suspicion in fact can be traced to major philosophic currents which work to invalidate such “common pleasures”. First is the essentially bourgeois view that the mass media is for the “masses”; it caters to the lowest common denominator of unreflective thoughts and easy emotions. Television programming, dominated by soap operas, talk shows, and musical video, it is argued, lacks pedagogic value: unlike classical arts, it offers neither spiritual enlightenment nor critical engagement with life's concerns. Popular culture pleases but does not teach.
Introduction
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- By Yao Souchou, University of Sydney
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- Book:
- House of Glass
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 23 July 2001, pp 1-24
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Summary
My life was as straight as a piece of wire pulled taut, without twists and turns. … And now it was not just bent, but tangled. And I could not see how I could unravel the tangle. Every day I feel my throat in the tighter and tighter grip of an outside power …
I would now have to be on the lookout, like looking for a needle in a pile of paddy stalks. The needle must be found, even the paddy stalks have to be destroyed. All this even though it was a small piece of pure steel, without the rust of evil, except for that speck of idealism, that history of love of people and country, that seed of patriotism and nationalism whose final flowering could not yet be clearly seen. And that you are careful that you are not pricked by that needle yourself. For the government and I as its instrument, must, however, look upon such idealism as criminal. (Toer 1992, pp. 50–53)
Thus begins Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer's magisterial meditation on the fate of one living under the spell of the colonial state in his House of Glass (1992). The time was 1912; the place, Netherlands East Indies. The narrator Jacques Pangemanann is a former Commissioner of Police. Educated in Lyon, France, he is indeed like Conrad's Kurtz, a flower of European civilization. But what confronts his heart of darkness is an enterprise far more insidious than those of economic plunder and military conquest by colonialism. He has been asked by the Dutch colonial authorities to investigate the “textual activities” of the anti-colonial radicals:
My new assignment was to study the writings of the Natives that were being published in the newspapers and magazines. Analyse them. Interview the authors. Compare them. And make some conclusions about their calibre, the direction of their thinking and their attitude towards the Government of the Netherlands Indies. (Toer 1992, p. 52)
Consumption and Social Aspirations of the Middle Class in Singapore
- from Singapore
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- By Yao Souchou, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
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- Book:
- Southeast Asian Affairs 1996
- Published by:
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Published online:
- 21 October 2015
- Print publication:
- 22 February 1997, pp 337-354
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Summary
Catherine Lim, one of Singapore's most acclaimed writers, describes in a short story a Mr Sai Poh Phan who is always perplexed by the demands of life, and the difficulties in reconciling his public duties and personal desires. “I'm only a humble civil servant”, he is moved to say by the satirical pen of the author, “I suffered much, but I'm glad that in the end it was for the good of so many Singaporeans”. Mr Sai is undoubtedly one of those who has made it to the upper reaches of the Singapore social-economic ladder. He has a well-paid job as a school principal, lives with his family in a two-storey semi-detached house, and owns an apartment which he rents out to a Japanese business executive. However, Mr Sai's evident satisfaction with his life is dampened by a self-doubt which plagues his otherwise perfect existence. Current riches are stalked by the shadow of past deprivations. Mr Sai tells his children, making a point about another middle class symbol: “Air-conditioning? I shared a room with three brothers and two sisters on the top-floor of a shophouse in Chinatown. We had two mattresses to share among us. Most of the time, I slept on rice-sacks. Now my son says he can't study except in an air-conditioned room!”.
All this is of course parody. But the story none the less conveys a sociological intelligence which helps to open up for a close look the world of the middle class in Singapore. In one way, it is clear that they aspire to much of what their counterparts in other parts of the world also seek: university education, professional jobs, designer goods, expensive cars, overseas holidays, golf club memberships and other forms of life-style consumption. The desire, we might say, is one in response to the lure of global marketing, and for acquiring goods that are crucial social markers in an upwardly mobile society.