I ATTENDED the matinee show Own Time Own Target at the Drama Centre in the National Library building over the weekend. One magazine lauded it as a 'laugh out loud, rediscovery of zany side of national service'. I presumed this meant it was a family-type show and took my two teenage sons, aged 16 and 14, to the show on the premise of a MediaCorp-owned magazine review.
To my horror, I was cringing uncomfortably in my seat the whole show, highly disturbed by the language used. I do not have a problem that the language was coarse and in dialects. But it was offensive when every sentence and curse uttered by the officers (rightly or wrongly, provoked or otherwise) at the NS boys in the drama was a profanity of the female genitals.
The show was a full house, with young and old, males and females equally represented. I am sure I was not the only one who was disturbed by the excessive cursing and swearing by the officers at the recruits. My observation was that people laughed out loud not at the clumsiness of the recruits but mostly because they felt uncomfortable with the profanities.
As a mother, I find it hard to imagine that after years of sheltered school life where students are taught values, to be gentlemanly and polite and respect their elders, these boys have to do NS run by officers who do not blink an eye when they curse their mother, sister, girlfriend and the whole female population by way of conversation.
My boys were shocked to realise that NS is a rite of passage where they will be officially subjected to bullying, shouting and cursing - nothing gentlemanly at all.
If this is a light-hearted look at life of NS boys during basic military training, I fear to know what my boys will face in their real-life situation when they enlist. Please, someone, assure me this is not so.
Wee Hua Boey (Mdm)
Kannina! Tell her to wake up her fucking idea!
She think her grandfather's army isit?
Nabeh chao chee bye! Fuck you, understand!
Distressingly, virtually all of the comments on the ST Discussion Board are chiding her (or worse), and saying that the rampant cursing is actually a good thing.
But I suppose this is how Stockholm Syndrome works.
On the up side, at least one more Singaporean has caught a whiff of the reality of Slavery, even if severely mediated.
If bullying, shouting and cursing are the worst her sons will be subject to, I will be very happy for them.
[Addendum:
Comment I like:
"It was a totally different world that I never knew existed in Singapore - one that was totally devoid of civility and that gave you the feeling that the environment was lawless, leaving you totally vulnerable to the whims and fancies of the trainers, who behaved worse than animals (and these were fellow Singaporeans by the way, both Poly and A level graduates - not some crack foreign commando team). I certainly hope things have changed since then."]