Basket.

Gay teacher comes out of closet on personal weblog - of course, the media are on to it like jackals. There will inevitably be fallout in the form of angry homophobic forum letters in the days to come. Surprisingly, little outright homophobia was expressed in the New Paper article today; what criticism there was mostly centered around him outing himself on a public site which his students could easily view. It is somewhat encouraging, because for now at least we have been spared that whole shtick about how society has been/will be doomed to irreversible moral decay and debauchery due to the existence of homosexuals etc etc. Unfortunately, there are still problems with this relatively moderate viewpoint that whatever he does in his personal life is his, but he should not publicly out himself and influence impressionable young minds.

Incidentally, that is the stand that MOE took. It is a disturbing stand if you look at it closely. Firstly, it assumes that homosexuality is a matter of choice - which it could well be, but evidence at the moment is weighing towards a genetic cause. Secondly, it seems to treat homosexuality as something of a disease; a disease of the mind which can be spread, as impressionable young teens pick up "the gay" from indiscreet elders. Last of all, it seems to indicate homosexuality as a choice is undesirable - which is really a very backward social attitude to take. Essentially, it is saying that: "Fine, you're gay. We can't do anything about that, but please don't make our children gay too." As if it were a contagion; as if human sexuality were a black-and-white situation, divided into two parts of "LIKES THOSE OF THE SAME SEX" and "LIKES THOSE OF A DIFFERENT SEX" with a line down the centre. As anyone with some knowledge in biology can tell you, that isn't the case. It's not that simple.

For the record, he eventually removed his posting. No doubt pressure was applied on him to do so, and the media circus would not have made things any easier. It just goes to show how backward social attitudes remain: homosexuals are still treated as an underclass here, despite the announcement made years back that gays would be able to work in the civil service. One outs himself now, and the result is a media circus and a classic MOE press statement that contains little of value yet carries a vague hint of menace. It can't be easy being gay in Singapore.

Personally, I believe that our country has quite a disturbing tendency to see teachers as something more than human. Every time a teacher does something very mortal, such as break down in a fit of rage and give an annoying student what for, it is national news. Previously, even a teacher posting and making fun of student mistakes on her weblog made it into the papers. Other people have nervous breakdowns at their jobs, and other people relate humorous incidents that happen to them at work. Why the special treatment for teachers? The old argument runs that this is because they (we?) are responsible for the education of the young and thus must set a good example. True enough, but teachers have personal lives too. They are human and have emotions, pet peeves, prejudices, wicked senses of humour et al. It is unfair to expect them to always be shining paragons of virtue. Give them a little space.

That said, it is true that teachers have to exercise a lot more restraint, if only because students these days are so incredibly tech-savvy. There are always many things which cannot be mentioned, and for very good reason. Unfortunately for us, students don't always know their limits in this regard (I have been fortunate enough that mine, somewhat, do). A little fun now and then - know when to stop.

Towards a fairer, more open, more progressive Singapore.

Just a day after my brush with Singaporean "entertainment", I caught the movie Ratatouille. It was extremely good, as I expected it to be, because Pixar hasn't failed anyone yet. My enjoyment of the show starkly contrasted with my boredom over the previous night's performance, and painfully highlighted to me the vast gulf between local and overseas standards of entertainment.

The most obvious difference, of course, was that Ratatouille was funny and our local artiste was not. How exactly does one make people laugh? It isn't an easy business, that is for sure, but I certainly know that rehashing years-old jokes about sex and bringing out the same old tired political cliches is not the way. Original material is very, very important - and Pixar is truly the master in that regard. The short film preceding the actual movie was a superb exercise in creativity. I won't spoil it; let us just say that it was a very fresh take on alien abduction.

Now, the pertinent question would then be: why can't local entertainment produce something half as good? Why does local entertainment showcase a comprehensive lack of originality? Why does every single Channel 8 drama serial involve a family estrangement of some sort, complicated by a seemingly insoluble love triangle, lots of shouting and crying and a final reconciliation over steaming rice bowls? (And Channel 8, sadly, is top of the local pile. Words have not yet been invented to describe how absolutely abysmal local English serials are.) Why is local comedy severely limited to the arena of sight gags and poor slapstick? Where is the creativity? Why do other countries have it, but we simply do not?

Perhaps it is the government's determination to utilise our media as a mouthpiece. Shackled by regulations and unwritten rules, all MediaCorp can produce are family dramas that stay within the public interest by promoting Our (wholly invented and fictitious) Shared Values. In that sense, the purpose of our local media is not entertainment but social engineering. Yet it is an unsatisfactory explanation - because Pixar films are also family-friendly. They all have happy endings and promote very wholesome values. At the same time they manage to be funny and wonderfully watchable; local drama and cinema does not even begin to approach that kind of quality. Why?

Can we then shift the blame on that old punching bag: the education system? The classic argument comes to the fore: that our education system has created a nation of the exam-smart, fully capable of doing well in any book-based test but dismally unable to offer solutions to unorthodox real-life problems. Certainly, I believe that this is a factor, but I would point out that book-based eduation systems are not uncommon. Britain, home of Blackadder, Monty Python and a good dozen other renowned comedy series, has a system that is similar and in some ways worse. The British don't seem to be hampered: why are we?

I am then very tempted to fling in an impetuous response: that Singaporeans simply would not know funny if it fell out of the sky and bashed them squarely on the head. This is evidenced by the fact that Phua Chu Kang managed to run for six years on, I quote from above, "sight gags and poor slapstick". If so many Singaporeans found that execrable sitcom funny, then it is no wonder local entertainment can't produce hilarity. But this could be over-simplifying things a tad. It does make sense to me as a knee-jerk response, though.

But that was just comedy I was speaking of. Coincidentally, Life! today came up with a feature on how local movies usually do not do well at the box office. I cannot say I was really quite surprised, to put it lightly. Local films are seldom if ever good. The last one I watched was "The Maid" and it felt like an Incredible Tales Episode stretched out to one-and-a-half hours with slightly snazzier special effects. The feature drove home the dilemma ever harder: what exactly is it that we lack, such that local productions are often so poor?

Hollywood, of course, comes in for plenty of criticism, but their movies are still of a far higher standard - and I have yet to meet anyone who does not agree with this. What could be the reasons?

Personally, I feel that Hollywood is cliched - but elements, sometimes subtle ones, still make the films produced there watchable. Little things like dialogue; dialogue in Singapore films and drama serials is often awful. It does not help that most of our local talent (term is used loosely here) cannot speak proper English. Instead of sending their actors for elocution classes, our local producers often try to play this up, in fact, to make it a central theme of the movie. Ok, we get it, heartlanders etc, now please do something different?

Yet to me the central dilemma remains. Why do local movies rehash the same themes over and over and over. If it isn't the education system, it is the government's/civil service's quirks. If not that, it is the army. Failing which, it is a cheap horror tale that tries its best to exploit Singapore's admittedly intriguing mix of tradition, mystery and modernity. Where are the fresh themes and ideas? Are we forever doomed to cheap slapstick, stilted dialogue and stale political wisecracks about GST and "the old man"?

If you have any views on this subject, I really want to hear from you.

I had the dubious fortune tonight of attending a function that included a performance by a well-known local... (I hesitate to use the word) comedian. I won't say which one, because that could get me sued, and that would really be a spot of bother.

Anyway, it was half-an-hour long and supposedly cost $3,000 - which I will point out, is the amount I make in an entire school term of bending 150 teenagers to my will, tasked with ensuring they get a proper education, getting headaches over whether they are getting a proper education and thinking of all the various ways I can help them get a proper education. Five days a week, at least 5.5 hours every day, for ten weeks, not counting all the marking I did in my own time - and this guy makes the exact same amount in half-an-hour of being unfunny.

Not that I expected otherwise. Predictably, he opened with sly digs at "the old man" *wink wink*; OH SHIT YOU ARE MAKING AN OBLIQUE REFERENCE TO LEE KUAN YEW. THAT IS SO, LIKE, COMPLETELY SUBVERSIVE WHAT IF THEY ARREST YOU AND STRIP YOU NAKED AND THEN DIRECT POWERFUL AIR-CONDITIONERS UPON YOUR BARE BODY, RIGHT EVERYONE? PLEASE TO BE LAUGHING, A FUNNY WAS MADE.

Yup, scintillating material so far. It would get better, naturally... because, with monotone regularity, the next issue on the comedic agenda was RACE.

Yes, let us make race jokes because it is so EDGY and some more I am Indian therefore if I joke about Indians the irony will immediately make everyone split their sides. This is such original material, I mean making light of race issues in Singapore? Sure, never been done. EDGY EDGY EGDY.

And then we get to the good stuff: sex, of course. This is where he actually did have a genuine chance to shine, but sadly his idea of being funny was to rehash really old jokes which I had all heard before I was fifteen. Say what you want about my personal morality, but honestly - $3000 to hear, again, about the old man who died because he fucked his wife according to the rhythm of the church bells and one day an ice-cream van came along?

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part is that most of the audience actually found him funny. Or at least they seemed to, because they actually laughed. I didn't raise a chuckle all night, personally. I barely cracked a smile. But what can we conclude from this phenomenon? Personally, it leads me to two conclusions: either Singaporeans are really polite, or they are really stupid. And since I can safely rule out the former possibility, because fucking hell, Singaporeans are certainly not by any measure polite, the conclusion I have to come to is that Singaporeans are stupid. City of the arts? With local "talent" of this sort and a populace who can't move beyond basic toilet humour and "sly" (read: fucking dated) political digs, our city is as much a city of the arts as the Fata Morgana is a city.

Comedy is difficult. Part of its difficulty is originality and unpredictability. If you can surprise an audience, you can make them laugh. If you manage to surprise and amuse an audience with utterly predictable material like sex, politics and race, then they are Singaporeans and are getting no better than they deserve.

One good thing did come of it, I suppose. I got a chance to see up close how completely pathetic Singaporean "comedy" is. The British are leagues ahead and the Americans can do slapstick a lot better. Come to think of it, Asian humour is pretty shitty in general. I've yet to hear a Chinese joke not based upon wordplay, for instance, and no Asian comic possesses the reach or sheer comedic value of Borat or Blackadder. The latter is particularly impressive - because it isn't slapstick and is low-budget. Watch Blackadder and you will notice how cheapskate the sets look. But the scripting, comedic timing and delivery are impeccable. Borat, on the other hand, is the epitome of slapstick. That is true comedy, not a a fucking rip-off boderline scam $3000 robbery playing to an audience that wouldn't know funny from a hole in the ground.

Getting used to school from the other end of the teacher's desk once more - and it really does feel a lot better. Students have two major worries: homework and examinations. The teacher has multiple, and sometimes they are more agonies than worries. Things are probably better in university, but there's always stuff one can't run away from.

It has been a year of new and valuable experiences, but I've been told I now have more white hair - no surprise, of course.

It's time to return to an era of diminished responsibilities.