A: Why do men go to zoos?" - H. L. Mencken
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(continued from Part 1 and Part 2; photos on GEO France's website)
Singapour, capitale mondiale de la cité-dortoir
(Singapore: world capital of the city-dormitory) (Part 3)
"In the paradise of conformity, it's in intimacy that one differentiates oneself"
"It's above all in domiciles that particularities between different religions express themselves. The faith of each is respected, but the State shows itself to be very fussy regarding religious "harmony" and with "signs" like the tudung... In public schools, for example, it is forbidden"
"Families rush to rent one or two pieces to the immgirants"
"In penetrating little by little into the heart of HDB blocks, one comprehends that it is unnecessary to find urban life elsewhere in the city because it is there, everywhere... The city interferes until the threshold of each appartment, reducing to a bare minimum the private sphere, to the benefit of public space. When a habitant adventures into a corridor empty of graffiti, he puts his foot into a world where everything is forbidden: dogs, cats, bicycles, rollerskates... Forbidden to bring and leave (?) one's affairs, to stock personal objects, to smoke, to eat, to throw paper; and offender beware. Everything is under the control of invisible surveillance cameras hidden in lift cars where, we say, there're also urine sensors.
The city is outside, and inside is life... [In Bendemeer] the "one rooms", reserved for singles, retirees, the unemployed, indigents or the sick... Lee Tong, a 55 year old Chinese... has lived for 40 years in the same room, a lost cell in the middle of an immense metallic corridor, lit along its 10 metres by a jaundiced light [?], like the belly of the Nautilus. A room like a cabin, "closed" by an airlock of steel trellises [?]. The furniture? A sofa and a table, 3 chairs and an immense TV flanked on its sides by a Buddhist altar and a gigantic aquarium. Lee Tong has 2 hobbies: Karaoke and a "Lohan Fish", an enormous fighting fish which pirouettes at the slightest sign in order to offer drawings of money on its flanks... His neighbors are ready to pay to view the fish and play [4D] with its numbers."
"She is supported by one of multiple charity organisations which assist the disadvantaged and replace the State in matters of social protection"
"Anjali Prakash is of Indian origin... Bedok, south of the megapolis, is a haven of integration for arrivals from the sub-continent...
In the HDBs of the North and the East, in Punggol or in Tampines, in the new 4- and 5-room projects, executives or retirees of the rising middle class, Chinese Buddhists, Christians or Malay Muslims, discover contemporary furniture and international kitsch. So the kindness of liberal economics which permits them to send their children to study overseas and discover the real world. And maybe stay there. It is not good to grow old in a country where social protection is very reduced so as not to incite laziness, the "scourge of Western cities".
It's up to the youth to repaint the future... In this society with a million straitjackets, all forms of art are a rebellion. A form of resistance... The motley tribe of young clowns, jugglers and marionettist-ventriloquists disseminated in two neighboring bars [?] which form parts of a troupe led by a young female Chinese who has it in her iron grip. It is them who will burst the autism of the City-State. Unless they in turn, like others who talk alone in the streets, seized by behavioral troubles [?], lost in the labyrinth of a culture condemned to the underground.
In Singapore, attempted suicide is forbidden and punishable by prison. However, for many years, this cause of death has been sufficiently significant to be raised by the "Straits Times", the local pro-governmental daily. In 2006, it recognised that with an average of one death a day from suicide, it was one of the [top] three causes of mortality of 15-35 year olds. Last August, 8 adolescents, fans of the video game "Slavers", led by a self-proclaimed Taoist monk of 16 years, had signed a pact. They would die to become killers in the virtual world and eradicate demons. Access to the roof of their HDB block in Jalan Damai Kaki Bukit was closed off, so in the night they entered the bedroom of one of them, aged 10, and opened the window. 2 jumped into the void of the 9th storey and were crushed in the yard. The rest, horrified, renounced the project."