Disney x Barney's: A Very Electric (and Slenderised) Holiday

One particular account of my childhood that my father loves to retell, much in the way that fathers always repeat themselves, is of replaying the VCD tape of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ every Sunday for me to watch. Four-year-old me would plop herself down in front of the television with my bowl of milk and watch in awe as candle lights danced with grandfather clocks. Every night, my mother would also read me ‘Snow White’ (the Disneyfied version with Disney illustrations from the movie).

No doubt I still have a particular fondness for Disney movies such as ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – it still remains to be a feast for my eyes – and ‘The Lion King’, as is the case with other girls of my generation who grew up with the Disney Princesses. But I’ve definitely grown to scrutinise the twee set of Disney Princesses with an increasingly feminist light for all the usual reasons that have been discussed and overanalysed to death – to which, I don’t really have anything to add. The resentment I have for the portrayal of certain Disney Princesses as domesticated, sexual objects, who do nothing to improve their predicament other than to daydream about finding “true love”, is abated by the other Disney Princesses such as Belle, Pocahontas, Mulan, and Tiana – intelligent, fiercely independent and determined female protagonists who arrived in the far more progressive society of the 1990s, and even more recently, the 2000s. 

Bearing that in mind, my initial impression of the Disney x Barney’s Electric Holiday campaign was one of hilarity and anticipation for the public disapproval of the slenderised Disney characters in the comments section. Sure enough, it was peppered with comments deriding Disney for belittling its social responsibility as a powerful media influence to young developing minds. In Disney’s defence, I found the slenderised Disney characters to be more hilarious rather than insulting – an obvious parody of the fashion industry’s unrealistic ideal body type superimposed onto Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck, who both lose their gloved paws and orange legs respectively in exchange for Caucasian human body parts. If anything, the awkward, emotionless characters on the runway emphasised that the characters’ best and most runway-worth outfits were actually their personalities – Minnie Mouse’s exuberance and Tiana’s feistiness were no match for their Proenza Schouler and Lanvin dresses. Disney’s saving grace was showcasing the characters confidently decked out in their runway outfits as their original selves in, orange legs and gloved paws et al.

To be honest, the subliminal message of the Disney Princess franchise that true love for a man is a prerequisite for happiness bothers me much more than this three-minute video. Even with the above-mentioned progressive female protagonists, all of them had to find true love as part of the admittedly limiting narrative. That in itself is a far more troubling message that will be ingrained into the consciousness of millions of young children as compared to that of a parodied body ideal largely intended for an adult audience who can identify Alber Elbaz and Anna Dello Russo. Brave's wild-haired heroine Merida with an equally wild streak in her personality was finally a step in the right direction, even though it was technically the brainchild of the always-brilliant Pixar folks. While this obviously doesn't entitle Disney to a free pass for its passive stance on the controversial issue of body image, I'd much rather see Disney subtly tackle this along with a whole host of other issues in future Disney Princesses as complex and multifaceted characters.

(P.S. On a non-Disney note, did anyone notice that the credits naming Nicolas Ghesquiere as Creative Director of Balenciaga is now considered outdated after merely two weeks of the video being released?)

(Lastly, while I might not have been a faithful blogger of late, please be assured that I have remained faithfully governed by a need to write. And so, write on, I will!)

It's okay to slap your wife, says Sean Connery

I don't exactly know what feminism entails. It's a term that's been heavily bastardised by popular culture and media, beaten into brute submission towards its chosen context and definition by its user, much like a violently abused spouse. I'm all for gender equality though, a phrase that has sometimes been propagated to be synonymous with feminism when really, they are often not the same, and gender equality should speak for itself loud and clear, instead of being unceremoniously shoved under some ambiguous umbrella term. Gender equality is a term that's less abstract and less subject to the user's capriciousness with regards to its definition. We all understand it, crystal-clear, that it simply means the equality of all genders, be it male, female, transsexual, etc.

Amidst the online furor resulting from the viral wife-beating video caught on CCTV, I've since been galvanised into the gradual formation of my opinion about gender equality in domestic violence, divorces and/or marriages. The details of the case are unnecessary, and frankly, reek of more holes than cheese (what kind of person releases such a video on Facebook?), but it's the comments the article has garnered that leave me intrigued. 

Although I don't personally endorse the resolution of a problem via physical face-slapping or stomach-punching violence regardless of gender, it happens. It's almost as if there is a genetic strain pertaining to physical violence in the human nature that is impossible to suppress. We're ultimately animals, too, and such a primal emotion as violent aggression has led to ugly cat fights and brawls between genders of the same sex being a dime a dozen on the streets. Fine, we say, slap on some assault charges for them if the violence has escalated to the point of hospital admission or otherwise resulting in severe injury for the victim(s). Give the victim(s) their deserved justice.

But what about violence between a man and a woman? If we see a woman slapping a man, we might stare and gawk in passing, our curiosity bordering on nosiness and risking a punch or two for ourselves. A woman punching a man? Security guards may suddenly appear out of nowhere to break up the fight, and a tiny little crowd might start to pool around the scene, but that's it.

Now, what about a man slapping a woman? 

Consider the fact that the idea of a man hitting a woman tends to invoke more outrage than a woman hitting a man. Yes, our outrage might be validly rooted in scientific research that men tend to be 50 to 60% stronger than women on average (ouch, that hurts to admit that we are not that physically equal after all, but it's a fact of our sexual dimorphism), but does the fundamental roots of such public outrage reach deeper than that? When asked, my father and my boyfriend say that they will "never ever hit a woman even if she hits [them]". They might not be an accurate statistical representation of the male population, but am I the only one who sees the problem with that declaration? 

It's true that physical violence is more frequently exerted by men upon their wives in their marriages, the usual common denominator for such domestic violence being the abuser's chauvinistic belief that their male gender comes with some sort of God-given right to exercise "control" over their women through hammered fists and whipped belts, all wrapped up in a nice big red ribbon delivered to their doorstep the moment they marry their spouse. A quick Google search about domestic violence immediately confirms this fact that women (children too, but that's for another topic) are commonly victimized.

But, in a Guardian article, it's cited that "more than 40% of domestic abuse victims are males", and most cases go unreported because other male figures investigating the case (police, jurisdiction, etc.) tend to disregard it, or the victimized males do not want to appear unmanly and weak. The collective public mindset assigned to the suffering of victimized males appears to be either "You deserve it!" or "Take it like a man!"; rarely do such cases garner the same widespread empathy and necessary legal action as if the genders of the abuser and victim are then switched.

In Singapore, the jurisdiction has tellingly grouped the laws pertaining to divorce and domestic abuse under the Women's Charter in the Singapore Council of Women's Organisations (SCWO)'s attempt to achieve "greater legal equality" for women. Besides domestic violence, when asked about the possibility of a law revision to allow men to claim alimony from women in a divorce under the appropriate circumstances, then-Minister of Community Development, Youth and Sports, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, said that society is not ready to abandon the "key principle" that women still need protection.

How is it that some women might be able to get away scot-free for hitting their spouses with wooden chairs and various other household objects and, even worse, hurling verbal abuse at them but a man slapping a woman might immediately be deemed morally obscene? In our attempt to achieve the elusive paradigm of gender equality, have we inadvertently placed the female gender on some sort of misguided pedestal and perpetuated the weak damsel-in-distress female stereotype in our culture as well as institutionally sexist jurisdictions? Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks that the Women's Charter, while well-intentioned, is also blatantly and misguidedly sexist. Come on, give women our credit where it's due. We're human beings too, just like men, and some of us are, you know, intelligent enough to use this "key principle" to our advantage (e.g. marrying a rich, dying millionaire to be guaranteed financial stability from his alimony in the event of a divorce or imminent death). 

Like I said, I don't endorse violence. But Mr. James Bond in the above video does make a salient point that gender should be irrelevant when deciding to hit a person, should violence occur at all. And if a woman hits a man, I think she better damn well be ready to receive a hit back in equal strength.

Excerpts from my diary: Greece Part I

Day 1, Athens (Thursday 28 June 2012):

The event we went to at the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus!

- The pianist is bent over his piano on the stage, each finger striking the piano keys with deliberate focus and timing. It’s almost the end of his piano solo and I can hear the sound of the poised tension in his fingers growing louder and louder, echoing throughout the ancient theatre. But there’s a dog barking, and everyone starts to giggle. Barking and barking wildly while the notes ring out crystal-clear and sad. The pianist somehow manages to finish his solo.

Day 2, Athens (Friday 29 June 2012):

- A motorcycle whooshes past us. We catch a glimpse of two paper bags of baguettes balanced precariously on each side of the motorcyclist. One hand is wrapped around one bag and the other is holding on to the bike to steer it. Off he goes, past the tourists and the ruins of the Ancient Roman marketplace. Just like any other day. We laugh at the absurdity of it all - the absurdity of the sight at first, then the serendipitous absurdity of the two of us landing up in Athens and laughing at this baguette motorcyclist.

Day 3, Athens (Saturday 30 June 2012):

Can you see the pencil on his ear? And the slightest hint of a smile?

- An old man with a grey moustache blanketing his upper lip looks up at us. Behind us, the helpful passerby shouts something in Greek to the old man, and he grunts, pointing to a table, then looks away and takes the pencil perched on his ear to jot something on paper. And now, a wordless whirlwind of clinks and thuds descends upon us as plates and other cutlery land on our table in a flurry. We watch the old man slop the chickpeas onto a plate and unceremoniously dump feta cheese onto our salads in his little corner of a kitchen. Dishes are set upon the table authoritatively, and we find glasses of white wine in our hand. We have not even looked at a menu.

- In a back alley where middle-aged, well-shirted diners dance clumsily indoors to a light pop tune in Greek. An aproned, bespectacled waitress roughly the age of the diners stands at the edge of this happening and bounces along disinterestedly. The grand layered cake in its full creamy glory bounces steadily on one hand. Outdoors, the other diners appear unperturbed by this event and share conversations over candlelit dinners in their elegant black sheaths and well-fitted striped shirts.

Day 5, Athens (Monday 30 June 2012):

- We take the bus, and ride the metro with ease. Everyone is staring at us. Yet there is this inexplicable sense of confidence that comes with the knowledge and instinct for navigating public transport. It’s like we’re locals. And we feel invincible.

Day 6/ Santorini (Tuesday 1 July 2012):

- The old man who sits motionless outside while we eat at the restaurant next to his home, only moving to wave back to a passing motorcyclist who shouts his name. He is expressionless and serene, observing yet lost in his thoughts. He doesn’t smile when he waves back to the motorcyclist. He just sits there.

- Sunset at Oia. It’s beautiful; everyone’s clapping as the red sun dips beneath the sea. But I feel numb, and I don’t clap.

Day 7, Santorini (Wednesday 2 July 2012):

- On the bus ride back from the beach, we pass by this bench at the bus stop on the side of an empty road vandalised with graffiti in child-like pastels. It looks lonely but full of promise against the backdrop of the undulating black body of the caldera diving under and above the sparkling seas like a fearsome dragon’s spine. Dragon, pastel-coloured graffiti, black dragon, graffiti. I can’t get this off my mind.

For my father who can't understand

Image taken from here b/c I don't possess such fancy luggage, sadly.

“Why don’t you want to stay home and, you know, understand your own culture?”

In front of me lay the piles of fabric and electronic appliances, spewed forth by my luggage, and my father’s perplexed face. The luggage was brand new from the supermarket; our previous luggage had finally succumbed to the constant beating by conveyor belts and its other larger, hard-shell comrades. My father’s expression was not new though.

He sighed.

I sighed, too.

My father had spent most of his life in China and Hong Kong for the past decade to run his own business, specializing in piping systems. He’d spent more time in a foreign land whose extended history of emperors and empresses he’d studied as a schoolboy than in his own country. Here was a man who could be considered a connoisseur of Chinese culture, a multilingual speaker who could discern a Chinese man’s original region based on their skin tone and accent or dialect, a ‘lao wai’ who knew how to make use of Chinese texting abbreviations.

How was it that he could think to ask such a question? Every single cell in my body was bristling and ready to refute him the way one would defend their loved ones at all costs.

I wanted to preach to this man the oft-quoted but ever-pertinent Proust line about seeing with new eyes as the real voyage of discovery instead of seeking alien landscapes of Gothic architecture and Khmer temples. I wanted to let him know how looking at these alien landscapes had transformed my previous indifference into renewed interest and curiosity in local Hindu temples and the Laughing Buddha at Waterloo Street. I wanted to tell him how the Italian Renaissance paintings in Florence made me seek out more local art installations and film festivals. The irony was that I was more interested in exploring my culture after I’d travelled.

How could I begin to tell him about my critical reflection on my cultural identity and race after finding myself vehemently resenting catcalls of ‘Ni hao’ on the streets of Paris even though I am technically classified as a Chinese on my Identification Card in Singapore? Given his time spent in China, did he not understand that travel inevitably made us the unofficial ambassadors of our country and its culture and national values? Did he not realize that the task of enlightening other people about our 42-square-kilometers island had been involuntarily entrusted to us the moment we crossed the customs and entered foreign cafes?

No, I’d begun in the past. Singapore broke off from Malaysia in 1965.

Or: Yeah, Malay is kind of our national language and our national anthem is in Malay but majority of us are Chinese, and I speak better English than I speak Mandarin because our classes are taught in English. I don’t speak Malay though. Yeah, I know, it’s complicated!

And every single time: You should come. The food is the best EVER!

If only it were possible, I would let him experience the organised Metro strike that I’d experienced in Rome, so that he might just have the slightest inkling on the impact it made on a young, impressionable teenager from a strike-and-riot-free country where public demonstrations are generally illegal. It must be highly possible that he witnessed the same abject poverty in China that I’d witnessed in Thailand, so he must be able to wholly comprehend the amount of privilege I had felt I’d unjustly wielded simply by virtue of being born into a corruption-intolerant and meritocratic incumbent government.

I’d started seeing things with new eyes, and like the eminent travel writer Pico Iyer, I was bringing new eyes to these people who would never even dream of stepping foot into Southeast Asia. And he hadn’t realised that?

I was angry, but I was also speechless. The piles of clothing at my feet lay all over the living room floor, tangled twistedly into each other like the ravel of angry thoughts struggling to free themselves from my tongue.

But then, he urged, “If you still want to cancel your trip, I don’t mind.”

I laughed, forgetting that I was angry. 

Lady Gaga and her fame enigma

Lady Gaga: Relentless fame chaser; pop-star persona immaculately manufactured by music moguls and PR powerhouses; passionate and intelligent devotee to David Bowie and Andy Warhol - the millennial child of all those energetic performers like Tina Turner and Madonna before her; highly vocal and guileless spokesman of the outcasts, the ostracized, the bullied, the ugly, the gay, the 'different'; successful social media star (Twitter); fashion icon. 

She wears many masks, but maybe she's the sum of all those masks. And in the intriguing intellectual duet with Stephen Fry, both of them agree on that sentiment. I see no reason why I should disagree; there is a certain amount of validity to that statement.

As much as I cringe when her dance pop songs come on to fry and sizzle the radio speakers, she's every bit a cultural enigma and can hold her own intellectually in an interview unlike someone like Britney Spears or Selena Gomez, one might imagine. Before she dropped out from the NYU Tisch School of Arts, she wrote theses on Damien Hirst and Spencer Tunick (photographer specializing in nude installations). In the Stephen Fry interview, she refers to her music as "my work" and boldly declares her "performance art" to be Brechtian in theatre philosophy. Wait, Brecht what?

Image credits from here: [1] and [2], [3]

This sudden outburst of theatre academia from the constantly lipsticked mouth that spouts self-glorifying and insipid lyrics such as "Gaga, ooh la la" and "I like you a lot, lot, I think you're hot, hot" can only lead to TWO conclusions about her:

1) She apparently perceives her "work" differently from the masses.

Blonde ambition and dedication to accumulating fame, rebellious Italian-American Catholic school girl, provocative sexuality, viscerally shocking performance presentation, controversial depictions of Catholic beliefs and icons - now, where have we seen that before?

Right. A certain pop singer with an equally meteoric rise in the music industry on roughly the same premises. But this happened about one or two decades ago. Madonna made no bones about it though - she was a pop star, through and through. Her stylist and jewelry designer created Madonna's look - bleached hair, crucifix jewelry, raunchy fishnet stockings, lace tops and skirts over capri pants. She posed for nude photographs for Penthouse and Playboy magazines because she needed the money - an action which she later regretted deeply. For all her fame-mongering, one can almost say that Madonna admitted it openly. Unlike her recent millennial incarnation who is a warped mash-up of David Bowie, Prince, Cher, Madonna, etc. masquerading as ingenuous high-heels-in-gym reality, Madonna knows she's an entertainer. She doesn't call her music and catchy pop songs "performance art".

Performance art is the kabuki theater. It's the Ballet Russes. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It's definitely not about gyrating your butt in latex to songs about clubbing and dancing and superficial relationships with boys. And let's call her out on it. Lady Gaga's music is frankly, quite terrible. The dance anthems are infectiously catchy car tunes that dispel the last vestiges of sleep from your head during the morning rush. They invade departmental stores and trendy cafes and sleazy dance clubs in equal measure. But three weeks or three months later, another pop song from another pop singer takes over. It's called pop music for a reason - popularity is arbitrary and fleeting in this cruel industry that is fueled by heavy-handed PR and music record Goliaths who push out the songs onto the radio waves. And despite Gaga asserting that she bares her naked soul for her records, her songs are flat, emotionless and robotic. Any lack of soulfulness in her inflections or heartrending poetry in her lyrics is quickly glossed over with the veneer of electro-synth beats and costumes made out of bubbles. And what is great art without great emotion bleeding out from every corner?

The most frustrating part of it all is that Lady Gaga actually has some talent, and can sing better than Madonna.

2) She's actually smart and talented.

Before she became Gaga, she was just plain old Stefani. Stefani was a bright-eyed, intelligent teenager who was quite skimpily dressed in her awareness of her sex appeal. After she dropped out from the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, she started a band and was singing Fiona Apple-like ballads when Rob Fusari discovered her in a night club on songwriters' night. As a "dance, urban pop producer" who helped pen hits for Destiny's Child and Will Smith, Fusari convinced Stefani to work with drum machines and beats. Gaga's music was a slow, burning evolution from Fiona Apple to Nirvana/Zeppelin-like rock, followed by dance/urban pop with the influence of Fusari who hooked Gaga up with RedOne, the songwriter who co-wrote the massive hits "Poker Face" and "Just Dance" that propelled Gaga into the industry limelight. 

 

There's nothing wrong with a musician experimenting with their sound, trying each one on for size before they settle with one that they're comfortable with, or fusing many different sounds together into their own distinctive sound. But with a voice like that, and a purported love for performing, Gaga could have done anything. And she does, trying her hand at jazz and rock'n'roll, albeit tellingly, after 'The Fame' was released. Read that last phrase however you want to, but as a classically trained musician and pianist who started taking piano lessons when she was four, Gaga could have been painting much more imaginative and inspiring soundscapes with her voice and talent. 

“I was classically trained as a pianist and that innately teaches you how to write a pop song, because when you learn Bach inversions, it has the same sort of modulations between the chords. It’s all about tension and release. But I want to do something that speaks to everyone. To me there is nothing more powerful than one song that you can put on in a room anywhere in the world and somebody gets up and dances. If you put a classical piece on, everyone’s not gonna mobilise. It’s gotta be something that resonates on a visceral level.”  
- Telegraph interview

But it has since turned out that she is no Tori Amos (before she sold her soul after 'Boys for Pele') nor Alanis Morissette who fused rock influences into their own brand of pop in an uncontrived manner with brutally honest lyrics. Instead of deftly exploring and experimenting with musical boundaries, Gaga chooses instead to rehash the physical appearance of Ziggy Stardust, Alice Cooper, Michael Jackson, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones et al to suit the sexed-up millennium - a layer of theatricality applied to what is otherwise really boring music. 

Oh, we get it, Gaga. You adore performing - it's your life and soul. You live for the crowds of adoring 'Little Monsters' whose deafening cries and tweets ring in your ears and on your computer/mobile devices long after you've hung up your costume for the day. Music appears only to be a vehicle for you to showcase your outrageous costumes and performances. And it's becoming increasingly clear that Gaga loves performing more than the monotonous music that she's churning out much like the ageless, emotionless android that she seems to be. 

Image from here

Meanwhile, she also claims that she doesn't just want to "lolly in the materialism of fame", but rather, to be an outspoken voice for the ostracized and the bullied. This layer of marketing magic dust sprinkled upon Gaga by her PR fairies to capitalize on her individuality might appear to be nothing more than annoying glitter that needs to be blinked out by the eyes of the more percipient observers, but one can't help but be taken by her unstudied charm and tongue-in-cheek humour during interviews. Yes, my eyes might roll over at her disingenuous ambiguity regarding her past sexual history with females (friends and family have corroborated that Gaga never showed any sexual interest in females) in order to push forth this marketing image. And Camille Paglia makes a salient point about the disconnect between Gaga's self-portrayal as a bully victim and marginalised artist, and her real status as a popular artiste, in an otherwise excessively scathing article. But she does come across as being really sincere about all her fans, even going to lengths to write a unifying anthem for them encapsulated in the song "Born This Way". Perhaps Gaga shrewdly understands the power of a strong fan base for fame and success (I'm looking at you, Taylor Swift), but honestly, this is the most positive thing about Gaga even if it's all been just one big marketing ball of wool pulled over the fans' eyes. 

That this unconventional and contradictious personality has willingly catapulted the plight of being unconventional into the mainstream consciousness is perhaps the singular reason why the society at large seems to be so infatuated with Gaga, who is the subject of millions of one-liners and numerous articles whirling through cyberspace with unstoppable force. Fashion blogs dissect Lady Gaga as a fashion icon and discuss her new perfume, cultural critics analyze the impact of her iconic status on society, and music critics are in two minds about Gaga's display of "extraordinary excess" in her hard-hitting electronic dance pop. What gets her detractors most riled up is the fact that Gaga with her bad music, questionable outfits, and heightened sexuality can actually stand for something socio-culturally and politically positive. We all know her music is otherwise passable and average at best, her costumes and general outrageousness merely repeating cultural and musical history, and her voice strong and technically superior but unmemorable unlike Amy Winehouse or Freddie Mercury. But like how Batman became the symbol for untainted goodness in the city of Gotham (sorry for this lame metaphor - watching TDKR twice in a week can do that to you), Gaga is an open call to arms for individuals trapped by their individuality. I'm not complaining if she holds such a positive and inspiring message for others, but the truth is that as a symbol of sorts, anyone can be Lady Gaga, anyone can become the imitable plastic barbie that she is. And long after Gaga is gone, others will take her place.

  

Image from here: [1] and [2]

In an industry where talented musicians and singers are sidestepped for "personalities" and "performers", Lady Gaga's individualistic personality was a match made in heaven with the music industry and relevant for our time. And like the fact that she wears so many hats (figuratively and sartorially), she also has a very, very keen sense of understanding of the industry that she knows how to use to her business advantage. Judging by the copycats that has since been spawned by her performing legacy (Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, etc.), she has definitely left a major impact on mainstream pop music.

Since we're still listening to her influences Michael Jackson and Annie Lennox/Eurythmics today, might we hear "Poker Face" on the radio ten or twenty years down the road on a radio station that plays the 'classic hits' and get to lament to our sprogs, misty-eyed, about how music was so much better in the past?

"Yeah, she's that crazy old woman who still wears weird stuff, you know?"

Two in Grey

(This is going to be a new series that I hope to keep up with - characters I've glimpsed on my train rides that I've found fascinating/interesting enough to be of note. Meanwhile, an update on where I'm at currently - as we speak, I'm frolicking in Santorini and its white-washed towns! Will be back soon! :))

The two of them sat side by side, the threads of their identical grey T-shirts barely touching each other. I knew their T-shirts were identical because I'd scanned every possible T-shirt seam from my vantage point directly opposite them. My eyes were drawn to do the same for their faces, checking for similarities in the profiles of their faces and their dishevelled hair in the same way you would if you were introduced to a pair of twins, or even siblings. Their small slitted eyes looked identical, but beyond this Asian stereotype, the one on my left was skinny to the point of scrawniness, and his T-shirt hung limply on his hunched frame. The one on the right was in loose jeans followed by an unkempt pairing of flip flops, a matching choice of footwear with his companion in shorts.


They were friends, I decided. No brother or cousin would want to be in identical T-shirts with the other. But then both of them sat in silence, their feet pointing askew in each other's directions. They listened intently to their MP3 players as if they were having long silent conversations coded within song lyrics and thumping rhythms. The one on the left - his entire body was tilted towards his companion, but they continued being in their own musical universes whilst gravitating towards each other.


Eventually, their feet pointed straight back at me, and the left guy held his head in his hands and closed his eyes.


Maybe they were classmates in identical T-shirts, or colleagues working part-time at an electronic gadgets store. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

We Love Shopping

If you were a bored upper-class housewife, or a Caucasian expatriate, you went to Fitzpatrick’s on Orchard Road – the air-conditioned land of New Zealand butter and tinned cocktail sausages. Otherwise, you went to the behemoth Yaohan supermarket at Plaza Singapura for a family affair. Rotary telephones were used for in-house staff communication and children paid 20 cents to have a ride on the colourful bumper cars outside the supermarket. Couples had punctilious regard for punctuality and turned up early for dates to the Cathay cinema followed by long chats over long, yellow tables in McDonalds’ or Swensens.

Images from (left to right, up to down): [1+2], [3], [4]

But that was all in the 1970s to 1980s. These days, while dates might still involve a movie at the Cathay cinema and maybe even Swensens, they are now punctuated with apologetic, or at least pretend-apologetic, text messages bouncing through the national telecommunications network to inform the other half of one’s late arrival, and “can you please buy the movie tickets first?” Or else, “I alr bought the tickets through my phone c u later”

Idyllic as those times might have been, bored upper-class housewives and Caucasian expatriates now scoot over to Jason’s at Orchard Towers; tinned cocktail sausages are de rigueur for neighbourhood NTUC supermarkets; and (The) Centrepoint is no longer cool. 

An entirely new retail culture has since been birthed. Now, there exist luxury supermarkets like the aforementioned Jason’s which imports pearl onions and prosciutto amongst other things; rails and rails of young Singaporean fashion designers’ wares at Parco NEXT at Millenia Walk; achingly hip districts popping up in the middle of nowhere like the Yong Siak Street, Yong Siang Hill and Haji Lane brethren; the proliferation of concept stores as pseuso-art galleries in possibly obscure locations; the renaissance of nostalgia rendering the possession of Polaroids to be "cool" and causing deliberately nostalgia-inducing store arrangements to filter through to the stores.

But before the list of the latest retail trends to descend upon our city makes you conclude that Singapore is an exciting place to be, consider that there are just two or three pseudo-art galleries/concept stores – industry pioneers like Front Row and A Curious Teepee upholding the bastions of creativity and local talent. The stores in Yong Siak/Yong Siang/Haji Lane mostly resemble the plastic moles in the Whack-A-Mole arcade game, sprouting up a-plenty and then popping back into their proverbial hole a year later, killed off by the overcrowding of clone stores on the streets and/or the limited size of their niche target market.

True, we’ve definitely come a long way from post-WWII consumerism, but I’m still really not of the opinion that Singapore’s retail culture is diverse and exciting – it’s not. At the end of the day, revolving near the centre of this new retail universe is the glorious ION Orchard and its bubble, architecturally and metaphorically speaking, of everything-under-one-roof material consumption, the phenomenon of online blogshops dabbling into self-manufacturing, and overnight queues sprouting outside H&M for its grand opening.

Images from [1] and [2] (left to right)

Save for the minority of the indie hipsters, the well-travelled Raffles City crowd highly in the know about such things, and the well-heeled fashion industry, notorious for their clued-in exclusivity, much of our retail culture is still dominated by the high street heavyweights and departmental store giants. Marks and Spencer at Wheelock is currently undergoing a major overhaul and fitting room queues at Uniqlo and H&M have not considerably shortened since their induction into the Singaporean fashion scene. These stores are anchor tenants drawing the bulk of the crowds to the latest malls and they know it. 

Such are the buying behaviours of local consumers. Just look at Orchard Central, the shining architectural gem amongst the ugly red and white edifices of Takashimaya or Paragon, boasting the most established Singaporean designers like Abyzz by Desmond Yang in its mall layout without the usual line-up of Zara, Forever 21 or even New Look. And yet, the last time I dropped by, hardly any soul was to be found and the Whitney Houston song playing in the background clearly expressed my sentiments for this mall – “I Will Always Love You”. 

But it’s slowly getting there. Even though the Topshop stores present here might not stage National Day celebrations like the Jubilee spectacle by Meadham Kirchhoff (who I absolutely love by the way); concept stores do not stage elaborate themed festivals to celebrate their birthdays; and there aren’t that many stores to cater to subcultures or niches, (but then again, we don’t possess as many subcultures in our ‘hoods as in Tokyo)….

....we’re getting there.

In-store fashion spectacles - a future reality in Singapore? Image from here.

“Shut up and shop” might be your concluding thought here, in hopes that I get distracted by ASOS.com or something, but frankly, there’s just so much to dissect and discuss here, and I’ve only barely scratched the surface.

This post might seem whiny, but what can we do exactly to encourage diversity in our retail culture? 

Although affordability appears to be the main consumer gripe that has propelled the unprecedented rise of high street chains and departmental stores up the retail chain, I highly doubt that we as consumers would flock to vintage stores like Beyond Retro if they existed in Singapore despite excellent price points. Would we still buy from blogshops if they manufactured much more interesting designs out of the norm? Probably not, because they’re ‘out of the norm’. Maybe niche stores are just that – catering to niche target markets. After all, it remains to be seen how many cafes with home-roasted coffee beans as their marketing advantage can fit into our 42 km² space.

So then, is it a question of Singapore's limited market size and growth that restrict expansion and/or evolution of our retail culture? I cite stores such as Kita-Kore in Tokyo, for example, who has done cross-cultural store exchanges with No Discount in Melbourne and Primitive in London, or pop-up stores in Hong Kong featuring Chinese designers. The Triple Major store in Beijing recently announced yet another store exchange with WOK in Milan, both of which will be available worldwide on FarFetch.com to buy. Our Asian counterparts appear to possess a more evolved/rapidly evolving retail culture as compared to the comparatively risk-averse and conservative retail strategies here.

Is conservativeness such a significant part of our society that it affects our retail culture? It does make sense that malls and shopping habits shape our society and culture at large and vice versa – desires for products and brands are after all shaped by cultural influences. We influence malls, and malls influence us. Should I just accept that our crowded and limited retail culture is inadvertently a part of our culture? 

Is it a matter of time or a matter of culture – or both?