OPINION — It’s 2017, and racial representation in Singapore has made some progress — but not as much as one might hope or expect, as an actor’s anecdote from a recent audition made abundantly clear.
Highly deja vu-inducing for fans of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None (re: that bittersweet “Indians on TV” episode), aspiring Ah Boys to Men 4 actor Shrey Bhargava was bluntly asked to “be more Indian” during an audition. As in speak with a thick Indian accent and “make it funny”, according to the casting director.
And so Shrey did — but the experience of portraying a caricature of his ethnicity (to elicit much LOLs, nonetheless) left him with a highly bitter taste in the mouth:
Look, we’ve been through this scenario so many times that at this point it’s just a rehashing of facts: Singapore has a huge issue with racial representation in the media. Shrey’s experience is but a small instance of how the local media landscape is still skewed towards clichéd racial stereotypes, as if it’s the only way to get laughs from Singaporeans.
But years of normalising hackneyed cultural mockery on TV and film could be normalising tone-deafness in real life as well. From blackface on Toggle to casual racism on morning radio. From casually associating looking “like shit” with “attending Deepavali” to actively keeping folks of minority races away from children.
Is the standard of Singaporean humor so cheap and shallow that we keep going back again and again to exaggerated accents and cartoonish depictions? The reality is, that’s precisely what’s happening, no matter your opinion on it. People love Army Daze’s lampoon of a racially diverse group of National Service recruits; people love Leticia Bongnino the Filipino maid; people love Phua Chu Kang the ah beng contractor. So there is a reason why the trope (dated as it may be) continues to exist in local media; it’s because a large percentage of Singaporeans actually find them funny.
Where are the sharp, cutting satires (no, The Noose’s slapstick shenanigans don’t count)? Where are the surrealist comedies? Where is the anti-humor? Where are all the snappy, sardonic exchanges? Where are all the multi-layered, meta jokes? I digress though — these are pretty niche concepts, and things that the Mediacorp-watching, Ah-Boys-To-Men-loving audience aren’t able to appreciate.
Important as Shrey’s post may be to point out that some roles offered for minority actors here could be deemed offensive, it’s also important to remember that he — like Dev in Master of None — could have outright refused to audition if he felt so strongly about misrepresentation. True, Ah Boys to Men may be guilty of perpetuating stereotypes, but we only hear Shrey’s side of the story — nobody knows exactly why the script called for a hammed up Indian accent.
Shrey had a choice not to participate in the whole thing, but alas, he did.
Jack Neo really loves his cartoonish Indian characters, though.
Jack Neo, as problematic as the racial representation in his flicks may be, isn’t required to portray a politically correct film. He’s not exactly known to be champion of cultural accuracy nor is he known to be a Serious Director. He churns out lowbrow movies, so of course it’s going to rely on lowbrow humor.
Nonetheless, that’s not to say that Singaporeans should simply settle and accept such a simplistic brand of comedy saturating our pop culture. Scriptwriters and filmmakers should be making an effort to move past dated notions and find other things that we can all laugh together about, instead of yet more punchlines about how Indians shake their heads/how Malays need to find a corner to lepak/how Chinese folks gamble away their children’s college fund.
This may be a radical idea, but maybe, just maybe, folks of all races actually appreciate having their diverse stories and faces represented onscreen, and feeling like they too belong, instead of being throwaway one-dimensional characters added only for yuks.
PS: Read this excellent chapter about ethnic representation in Singapore film and television by Professor Kenneth Paul Tan of the National University of Singapore to see the different unfortunate categories our local actors usually get pigeonholed in.
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