S’pore Writers Fest: A whole new world (or not)

SINGAPORE — “Why do I want change? We’re reasonably okay.” “But you said change is good backstage!” “I was referring to your wardrobe.”

Cymbal crash!

That was The Teenage Textbook’s Adrian Tan ribbing poet/critic Gwee Li Sui during their very amusing joint SWF Lecture titled Brave New Animal Farm on Day Three.

Had a slightly more relaxed SWF experience today, moderating a lively discussion on writers wearing a number of hats (Amanda Lee Koe, Heman Chong, Jeremy Fernando and Marc Nair) at 10am on a Sunday and catching another launch, the feline-friendly anthology From The Belly Of The Cat, edited by Stephanie Ye.

The main event, though, was the lecture. In a session moderated by director/actress Selena Tan, Tan and Gwee took on Animal Farm and Brave New World, respectively.

“Change just means being the same… The next group who takes over will be the same,” warned Tan in his piece The Seduction Of Change, which looked at the different characters in Orwell’s novel. But before that, of course, quips and digs flew left and right beginning with the irony found in the very venue itself. SOTA was located in Zubir Said Drive. A dead-end road named after the guy who wrote Majulah Singapura. (Geddit?)

He would later recount the story of the Orang Laut who dealt with foreign traders (or FTs) while living in a sampan (geddit?) and would later complain about these FTs while weaving their nets—known as netizens. (Trust me, his deadpan delivery was quite funny).

But of course, Tan’s lecture had bite as well, describing Singapore as a “nation with multiple personality disorder”, describing the Workers Party as “old-school PAP” (in that its promises of a “First World Parliament” has turned out to be more of the same)—but that that’s exactly what Singaporeans want. “We want to change our looks without changing ourselves. We want superficial change.”

Having not read Aldous Huxley (fantasy and sci-fi readers a bit like fans of DC and Marvel or Liverpool and Man U, methinks, and I’m the former in all three), I had to completely rely on the equally funny Gwee’s Community, Identity, Stability to figure out the Singapore link (he tries to help but pointing out that Disney’s Aladdin rips off Brave New World).

At some point, he went into how, in the book, babies are mass produced and children are engineered to go into pre-determined social castes. How, in the book, arts and culture are subversive as opposed to science. How the characters can’t really fit into this world, how the dictator Mustapha Mond is a book lover (gasp).

But, as Gwee pointed out, the clincher wasn’t that you had all these allusions and metaphors in the book that could stand for Singapore, but that Singapore actually gets a mention in the book. A place where you had 16,500 embryos cloned from a single ovary. Written in 1932, it’s kind of prophetic, he said.

The post-lectures discussion had some interesting bits too. Someone asked about the idea of the “heartlander” and Tan replied how it’s something politicians formulate, from the United State’s “Middle America” to England’s “Essex Man”, before of course pointing out that if 80% of the population are heartlanders, “we’ll be walking around throbbing all the time.” (Geddit?)

How does one change society? Gwee quipped that if anyone can answer this question, he or she should be at the Istana. Or hanging out with the “old man”. Or even be the “old man”.

Someone asked Tan to complete the sentence “Power corrupts…” “Absolutely.”

And of course, that bit at the start about change and Gwee’s wardrobe.

But of course, he had his own touché moment, too.

At some point during a rather lively thread (thanks to a rather passionate audience member) about Singapore having no heart and soul today (or was it about politics?), Tan pointed out how the best Russian literature came out during the most oppressive times. “The atmosphere in Singapore is hardly oppressive,” he shrugged.

To which Gwee quipped: “Well, writers in Russia didn’t live long enough back then.”

Cymbal crash!

The Singapore Writers Festival 2013 runs until Nov 10. For details, visit http://www.singaporewritersfestival.com/. Check out the buzz on the local arts scene, including updates on SWF at http://www.todayonline.com/artlanders