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Monday, Dec 07, 2020 - 22:54 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Diam Diam Lah



Jack Neo's The Diam Diam Era was nostalgia concentrate to me; the cramped (if lively) HDB flat of the protagonist family, right down to the standard-issue room doors with vents at the top; the Chinese-medium high school (at least, formerly) that the main character attended, complete with familiar white shirt and khaki pants; the kickabouts and hanging about video arcades that he enjoyed with his pals - coincidentally set at the Beauty World shopping centre, one of my old schoolboy haunts. Ah, those were the days indeed, only that it was more street soccer than field for me during lower secondary, and hours of classic Counter-Strike 1.6 and DotA at the then-prevalent LAN shops instead of furious joystick-twirling and button-mashing (especially during those S$1/hour October Blues promotions). The difference was that I didn't skip classes (or, if I did, very seldom, okay?) and mostly kept those grades up, 'cause I'm uncool like that. My main regret is that I didn't spend more of my time on those activities - but don't tell the kids.

But well, we all grow and change, which is one of the main underlying themes of the movie, another of which is the impact of the government's language policies on Singaporean society. LKY's administration had imposed English as our working language then, which involved discouraging the use of Mandarin dialects (to the extent of fines within school environments, so it seems), making English the medium of instruction even in traditional Chinese vernacular schools (including my alma mater), and even forcing the absorption of the former Nanyang University (which retained instruction in Mandarin) by the University of Singapore (including, so it happens, the precursor to our Department of Computer Science), to form NUS - all these events of which were addressed in the film.

Obviously, this raising of English above other native languages would not be well-received by all, particularly adults who had little facility in it, which extended to otherwise highly-educated citizens (e.g. the mathematics teacher, in the trailer above). While LKY was probably right on balance in insisting on English as the primary medium, for purposes of racial cohesion and integration into the wider economy (a subject with which our neighbours are grappling with to this day), some resentment at perceived elitism was unavoidable, all the more as the higher doors of (political) power were seen as closed to "Chinese helicopters" (with "helicopter" supposedly a mispronunciation of "educated", though heck if I know how that transformation came about) who didn't jiak kantang. That phrase was introduced in a scene with a visiting U.S. Army officer, who had the good humour to pat the designated chopper on his shoulder.


Literal Chinese helicopters
(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)


The government had more-weighty matters on their minds then than mollifying the slightly-Chinese chauvinist set (who, it was left unsaid, were also bearing the brunt of LKY's anti-socialist clearout for their links to the motherland), and there was moreover reminiscing for the good old colonial days by some too - the British had guaranteed pensions and healthcare for retired civil servants, so it seemed. Overall, I'd say that the incumbent party has had their way on language. Dialects appear on their last legs, and even at my ostensibly cheena high school, I'd gather that my classmates were generally rather more proficient in English than Mandarin, excepting the PRC scholars, of course.

Life goes on whatever tongue one curses it in, though, and we see our young hero eventually embark on his first (arranged) romance, indicated by the impossibly-trite gimmick of knocking into the fated girl and sending her papers flying (accompanied by slightly-overused time-freezing effect, which I suppose was fairly well-executed given the budget). This pretty accurately reflects the Asian attitude towards procreation and carrying on the family line, by the way - one day, the parents are lecturing on the importance of one's studies and not wasting time on relationships, to the extent of entirely grounding their children. Then, suddenly, the switch is flipped, and all the relatives will come badgering one about girl/boyfriends, and surreptitiously slip dating advice and prepaid gift cards for premium adult websites into one's reading material. Subtlety's not a particular feature of the culture on such matters, on which more later.

Despite a convincing performance by Richie Koh, Mark Lee again stole the show here (happy that he's been getting some recognition internationally, after a long grind in local circles), by driving the political angle as a coarse, foul-mouthed taxi driver - one of the abovementioned Chinese chauvinists (or overseas patriot, depending on how one sees it), to the extent of falling out with his son for successfully obtaining a Singapore Armed Forces scholarship (which other parents might well have bitten their own left arm off for, seeing as how it's been a reliable path towards parachuting into top positions at various ministries and GLCs); Lee's character would go on to propose the unthinkable - the formation of a populist opposition party, which was probably amongst the boldest "crimes" of that era.


The best leaders don't take themselves too seriously...


We've seen how fighting The Establishment goes in America too, incidentally - the 158th ranked FAKE NEWS corporate-controlled mainstream media respected newspapers will go all the way out to smear the upstart challengers, with no avenue for rebuttal and presentation of alternative perspectives offered, and frankly one can make even a saint look very bad, by consistently reporting only his negatives (not to say that this entirely applies to either our or their opposition stars). One has to suspect that at least part of our administration's distaste for GEOTUS was due to his demonstrating that it is possible to win against such odds, with the entire machinery stacked against him - which, I'm sure, has kept at least some of our dear leaders up at night.

Not that I actually dislike our ministers, though. A few have shown themselves to be great good sports like The Donald, in this case former Minister for Transport Khaw, who delighted in his largely-thankless secondary role as Mark Lee's sidekick, which I guess he's gotten used to. Shanmugam and Osman were cheekily name-dropped too; the former, by the way, has just expressed his disappointment at the United Nations giving weed their blessing - it was always coming, mind - with the complaint that money and not science had driven the decision. Well, this could be partially true, but still more than a little ironic looking at many of the policies relating to the coronavirus, that have been pushed by various global scientific authorities...



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