His article can be found here:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultur ... utube-star
What troubles me is some Singaporeans' response to Heller's criticism. Especially in the form of this piece of satire.The most winsome political dissident you’ve never heard of, Amos Yee, is a Singaporean, a YouTube personality, and an activist who takes his cause more seriously than he takes himself. He has hair like a haystack in late afternoon and the nervous timing of a standup nebbish. He curses as imaginatively as a Scotsman in an Iannucci script, and, despite his perfect vision, he wears glasses on camera, for style. He’s a humanist—a close student of street idiom and indie film—but he has a data wonk’s appreciation for comparative statistics and a wariness of received wisdom. On concerns such as gay rights, income inequality, and free speech, he’s outspoken on the right side of history. He is seventeen years old.
He is also, in his home of Singapore, an alleged criminal for what he’s said. On Friday, March 27th, Yee uploaded a video that criticized Lee Kuan Yew, the recently deceased founding father of postwar Singapore, and also took a swipe at organized Christianity. By the following Monday, after formal complaints from some fellow Singaporeans, Yee had been arrested under Section 298 of the country’s penal code, which forbids the uttering of words that might hurt the religious feelings of any person, and the Protection from Harassment Act, a recent law ostensibly set up to guard against cyberbullying. His blog, where he had posted an illustration of Lee and Margaret Thatcher in flagrante, was censored; it earned Yee an obscenity charge under Penal Code Section 292. He was released on a bail of twenty thousand Singapore dollars, and is currently awaiting hearings. He has been ordered not to post anything more online. If he’s found guilty, he could face a fine of five thousand Singapore dollars and three years in prison.
Previously, Yee’s targets had been overly pliant citizens, religious hypocrisy, governmental agitprop, and parents. His smart-alecky YouTube videos, which he began releasing a couple of years ago, were directed equally toward the Singaporean youth and a more international, American-style audience. It is easy to lose a lunch hour in such homemade productions as his exposition of Singaporean English and his review of “The Da Vinci Code.” Yee’s style is both manic and concinnate, confident and strangely self-aware. If most teen-agers deploy sarcasm and snark, he has a sense of higher-order irony—a pearl-like virtue in a society that tends to disdain intellectual risk.
Singapore today has a well-guarded culture of political deference. This year’s World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, ranks Singapore a hundred and fifty-third out of a hundred and eighty countries, just below Russia. All seven domestic TV channels are under governmental control, and it is illegal to own a satellite dish. (Radio and print are similarly regulated.) As Yee points out, the country’s rampant inequality—by some measures, the highest in the developed world—is a red flag given its tax levels and unemployment. Singapore may sparkle with clean streets and the kind of airport where you hope for a long layover. On rights, though, it’s stunningly retrograde. Homosexual acts between men are illegal, and can lead to two years in prison. The country famously uses caning to punish various nonviolent infractions, such as overstaying a visa. Oppositions to these policies are easily suppressed in a small place with stringent policing and, until the Internet, hardly any outlets where free thought could spread.
Yee’s arrest doesn’t just underscore his complaints about Singapore’s backwardness on rights and freedom. It shows the country’s dire need for cultural education through intelligent dissent. In the days after Yee’s arrest, a slew of local celebrities, including three Singaporean starlet types, were interviewed about his videos on national TV. In sequences depressing to watch, they all sided with the state. “If you say that, ‘Oh, people can say whatever they want, all the time,’ then what about those people who are listening?” Joshua Tan, a young actor, said. Well, what about them? The suggestion that citizens should withhold political criticism for fear of offense is preposterous—far more embarrassing to Singapore than any videos by Yee could be.
The citizens of developed nations in the twenty-first century should not need to be told that free expression is a basic attribute of political health. It’s part of Yee’s precocity to realize that a population molded into sheeplike complaisance is ideologically vulnerable. If his opinions sometimes tend toward the extremes (in a more recent video, he urges young people to drop out of school, the better not to, you know, go to learn the words of fools), his goal seems to be to unsettle the existing Singaporean power structure enough that young people have no choice but to broaden their expectations. His flamboyant thought and language is part of the best tradition of dissension, from Voltaire to the Velvet Revolution, and it accrues to creative fields beyond politics. Yee is something of a cinematic prodigy, having snagged two top prizes in a Singaporean festival for a hilarious short he made at thirteen, in his bedroom. My own favorite of his productions is a review of “Boyhood,” a movie that—he spares no imagery in telling us—blew him away.
Certain of the praiseful sentences that Yee sends toward Linklater’s film are gibberish. But a number of his basic observations are well-judged, and even the squawks of analytical nonsense are endearing: most of us in the verbal professions went through periods of blowing large amounts of wind through the instrument, trying to understand how the music works. (Some of us, maybe, never really outgrew that age.) For older people, Yee’s review offers a welcome reminder of those times at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, when the world of mature self-expression was fresh and every art work seemed in need of overwrought endorsement.
If anything, Yee has all the hallmarks of a green and thriving mind; he is exactly the kind of person you would one day want reviewing your books, making your movies, maybe even running your country. Americans, who enjoy the benefits of free media, have a responsibility to take him more seriously than they take the government that has tried to quiet him for thinking freely in the public sphere. And those of us in the Fourth Estate have a duty to spread word of his ridiculous charges. If people like Amos Yee end up the custodians of our profession, the future of countries like Singapore can be brighter than their past.
http://www.allsingaporestuff.com/articl ... g-amos-yee
Dear Mr Heller:
I am a Singapore citizen writing from a small backwaters town in Singapore. I would like to thank you for your recent piece on the New Yorker, entitled "Amos Yee: YouTube Star, Teen-Ager, Dissident" It was a very enlightening article and caused the scales to fall from my eyes and to view my homeland Singapore in a new light.
First, I would like to express my immense gratitude that the White Man's Burden, which I thought was gone with the end of colonialism, is still very much alive. As an Asian Chinese brainwashed by Confucianism, I was unable to see the self-evident virtue and superiority of Western ways such as American-style democracy. I now realize that the true yardstick of a country's maturity is how closely it adheres to American culture. We Singaporeans should emulate your country's culture of democratic bipartisanship , so as to achieve happiness progress and prosperity in our young nation.
Your words show that you have an intimate understanding of Singapore and care very much for the welfare of Singaporeans. While others might accuse you of "imperialism", I know that you are only discharging the sacred responsibility of telling us how to govern our country because as an American courageously carrying the White Man's Burden, you know what is best for us unenlightened Singaporeans.
I would also like to thank you for helping me to see the term "humanist" in reference to the artistic work of Amos Yee:
He’s a humanist—a close student of street idiom and indie film—but he has a data wonk’s appreciation for comparative statistics and a wariness of received wisdom. On concerns such as gay rights, income inequality, and free speech, he’s outspoken on the right side of history. He is seventeen years old.
According to my limited Singaporean understanding, humanism is a philosophical position which emphasizes the value of human beings, reason and empirical evidence. I did not know that humanism includes the use of profanity to mock the deceased and to insult people's religious faith. Saying harsh things about someone's religion to incite him to anger is a fundamental human right to free speech. What a beautiful idea. As human beings, we have free will which we can use to express ourselves by deliberately offending people. Thank you for helping us Singaporeans see this!
I found myself nodding in agreement as I read your characterization of Amos Yee as having "a sense of higher-order irony—a pearl-like virtue in a society that tends to disdain intellectual risk." Your words have deeply penetrated my mind and the brainwashing of my Government is now in the process of being undone. I now realize that it is virtuous to release a video filled with profanity and reductionist slogans, to describe the nation's mourning of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's death as "necrophilia" and fellatio. It doesn't matter that Lee was not yet properly buried and that he was deeply and universally respected by Singaporeans. The right to inject vulgarity and venom into the public discourse transcends petty cultural standards of decency and respect.
It is a noble intellectual risk to publicly challenge a grieving Prime Minister to sue with an eloquent "Come at me, Motherfucker." And a graphic cartoon which depicts Singapore's Founding Father and Margaret Thatcher engaged in a sexual act could very well be the kind of "higher-order irony" which will really benefit Singapore's intellectual and cultural progress. Some people may say that this type of "Freedom of Speech" is permissible in America but undesirable in Singapore. But I have become a subscriber to American exceptionalism. Anything which comes from America has got to be exceptional and ought to be imported wholesale into our country.
I would also like to express my profound gratitude for highlighting the true colours of my country's "rampant inequality" to the world. Our prisons are flooded with gays serving two year sentences for homosexuality. Caning people to prevent them from overstaying a visa is a barbaric practice. I should write to the Immigrant and Checkpoint Authority to suggest that they emulate how the USA deals with illegal immigrants. Who cares if our limited infrastructure is overwhelmed and if our taxpayers are taken to the cleaners? Human rights are more important! We can learn from the United States and build camps to detain the women and children of illegal immigrants so as to shower them with an abundance of human rights.
You are correct to note that prior to the Internet, there were "hardly any outlets where free thought could spread". From 1965 to the internet era in the late 1990s, Singapore was a nation of silent, mindless drones and nobody was able to express critical opinions against the Government till they got access to the web. But some historically-inclined people may ask: what about the numerous Opposition parties - the Barisan Sosialis, the Workers Party, the Singapore Democratic Party, etc. who were able to organize themselves to campaign against Government policies? What about Chiam See Tong, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, Chee Soon Juan and company before there was any internet? What about the strong public backlash in 1983 which caused the Government to rethink its controversial Graduate Mothers Scheme? What about Catherine Lim, whose critical essay was published in the supposedly "Government controlled" Straits Times in 1994, which thoroughly provoked a robust reply from the then-Prime Minister Mr. Goh Chok Tong? Mr Heller, I am sure you know who all these people are. But perhaps from the viewpoint of American exceptionalism, all these examples do not measure up to American standards of "free thought". We Singaporeans must strive to measure up to these standards.
In your article, you wrote: "Yee’s arrest doesn’t just underscore his complaints about Singapore’s backwardness on rights and freedom. It shows the country’s dire need for cultural education through intelligent dissent." Thank you for reminding us how backward we are. Unlike your country, Singapore does not profess the right to spy on our neighbours by eavesdropping on their leaders' phones. Our President Tony Tan does not have the right to use unmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists. Our cops do not have the freedom to shoot and choke people or shoot them in the back as they try to flee. We do not have the right to detain people in concentration camps outside our country's territorial boundaries. Our Singapore Armed Forces do not have the freedom to conduct unilateral invasions or military operations. These are the rights and freedom that a small nation like Singapore would probably never attain. But still we must still look to the US as a shining beacon whose light we should follow.
Thank you for pointing out that we Singaporeans are "a population molded into sheeplike complaisance". I guess that even though 40% of our nation's electorate did not vote for the Government in the last election and that Singaporeans can - and very often do - express critical opinions of the Government on social media, there is still a long way for us to go before we become a nation of true freedom like the United States, where the blind can buy guns and people are free to express their opinions by burning the nation's flag, picketing the funerals of dead soldiers (with signs that read "God Hates You" and "Thank God For Dead Soldiers") and joining a party espousing Nazi ideas.
Most importantly, I am very appreciative of your endorsement of Amos Yee as a future leader of Singapore:
If anything, Yee has all the hallmarks of a green and thriving mind; he is exactly the kind of person you would one day want reviewing your books, making your movies, maybe even running your country. Americans, who enjoy the benefits of free media, have a responsibility to take him more seriously than they take the government that has tried to quiet him for thinking freely in the public sphere. And those of us in the Fourth Estate have a duty to spread word of his ridiculous charges. If people like Amos Yee end up the custodians of our profession, the future of countries like Singapore can be brighter than their past.
Mr. Heller, even though your suggestion that Amos Yee should lead Singapore would certainly be met with derisive laughter from Singaporeans from all walks of life, it is because most Singaporeans are deluded. I now understand that True Democracy is not measured by what the people of Singapore want. It is about how what Americans think Singaporeans should want. There must be some kind of mistake that the great dictator Lee Kuan Yew's political party has been voted into power in every General Election since 1959. The only plausible explanation is that we Singaporeans are unable to think for ourselves and need American newspapers which are non-ideological, objective and owned by wealthy men who are passionately concerned about truth to help us to think how we can make our country brighter.
Mr. Heller, on behalf of my fellow Singaporeans: Thank You. Where would we be without you?
- More at AllSingaporeStuff.com http://www.allsingaporestuff.com/articl ... g-amos-yee
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What troubles me is the attempt to characterise freedom of speech as a western value, especially one that is American. Especially in regards to the notion that religion is something that should not be touched by the freedom of speech, especially one that should not be mocked.
In light of the recent Charlie Hebdo's attacks, it seems that there is an interpretation about freedom of speech in "Asia" that argued that religion is an institution that cannot be touched. By treating the issue of freedom of speech as some sort of mere "western" value, it becomes easier for "Asian" societies to effectively argue against the idea of it being a form of human right.
Any further comments you guys have to share would be welcomed.
