Art can be shocking and disorientating, provoking thought by stepping off canvases and breaking out of marble shells. Audiences in the 21st Century have come to expect increasingly abstract and personalised viewpoints: we can accept mediums as diverse as human bodies, lights, sound, animals, installations, film, nudity, violence and photography.
The barriers between artist, audience and artwork are also continually traversed. This is especially obvious in the field of installations and performance art, which use touch, sound, taste and mental fantasy–beyond mere visual observation–to reflect each artist’s view on modernity and the world they inhabit.
Above: “Love’s Paradox” by Damien Hirst (http://www.heraldsun.com.au)
Yayoi Kusama (1929 - Present) is an avant-garde Japanese artist and precursor of pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements. In the mid-1970s, Kusama voluntarily checked herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill. She now she lives at the psychiatric hospital by night and works in her studio (a short walk away) by day.
Below: art by Yayoi Kusama (http://uk.phaidon.com)
The first striking thing about her work is the abundance of polka dots on every type of surface, walls, floors, canvases (some of them as long as 30 feet), mirrored rooms and even naked assistants. Suffering from nervous disorders and hallucinations since childhood, the vast fields of polka dots, or "infinity nets," as she calls them, are taken directly from her hallucinations where items (like polka dots, flowers, patterns or colours) would compulsively and aggressively multiply, alarming and overwhelming her sense of physical reality. In numerous art installations, stark white, moulded phallic protrusions seem to grow out of, cover and completely consume items like shoes, boats, chairs and ladders.
Performance art and public happenings are also a significant part of Kusama’s work. She often invites public participation and advertises in newspapers and magazines promoting these happenings in public spaces, where she would paint polka dots on these volunteers.
Her neurosis has given her a type of vision, and her art is almost inseparable from her individual experience. By transcribing her own mental version of reality into a physical realm, it is as journalist David Pilling remarks:
Image source: http://www.cindrea.nl
Performance art, involving a higher degree of unpredictable interaction, shifts art from a static teaching tool to a highly interpretive dialogue between performer and observer. One of the most well-known performance artists is Marina Abramović (1946- Present), famous for using her body as her primary medium and subject to explore physical, emotional and imaginative limits. Considered the grandmother of performance art, her inclusion of observers and outside participants has pioneered a new notion of identity. Though disturbing and seemingly sensational on the surface, her performance art becomes the opposite of sensationalism or exhibitionism–a gesture of self-erasure.
In Rhythm 0 (1974), one of her best-known performances, Abramović placed 72 objects on a table, ranging from those that were harmless or could cause pleasure (a feather, wine and a flower) to those that could inflict pain (whips, knives and a loaded gun on a table). For six hours the artist allowed random members of the audience to manipulate her body any way they chose.
Image source: http://www.theguardian.com
The self-erasure of the artist, with her body as a passive canvas, explored the limits of the relationship between a vulnerable performer and an active audience. The resulting violence reveals the casual aggression a human subject can inflict when protected from social consequences.
Often, Art no longer holds artist and audience at a safe, protected distance. It invites the physical inhabitation of a mental scape, including more invasive physical manipulations (as in Abramović’s use of her body), creating dynamic, multi-sensory and often destabilising experiences.
The Politics of the Outsider in Ken Kwek’s Unlucky Plaza (2014)
Nearly halfway during Ken Kwek’s film Unlucky Plaza (2014), Sky (played by Adrian Pang), a wealthy motivational speaker, references the character Shylock in his fear and frustration against a ruthless loanshark (played by Guo Liang) that has come to collect a bad debt. This will doubtlessly remind audiences of Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice and of the Jewish moneylender who demands ‘a pound of flesh’ off Antonio if he cannot pay off his debt. In the play, Shakespeare positions Shylock as an outsider in Venetian society, a character whose unsavoury dealings with money and payment earn him contempt and scorn with the other characters. Couple this with the fact that Shylock is a Jew living on the fringes, both politically and economically, in a Christian society, and Shylock becomes a reviled symbol of antisocial cupidity and unchecked materialism.
Kwek’s film uncannily places its main character, Onassis Hernandez (played by Epy Quizon) as an outsider in Singaporean society. He is a Filipino man who has a son from a failed marriage to Cindy, a Singaporean. As the film begins, we learn that he is about to be evicted by his landlady for not being able to pay the new rent rate for his flat. It turns out that he is the owner of a small café in Lucky Plaza (a place which has become famously associated with Filipinos living in Singapore) selling Filipino cuisine. Onassis is in dire straits as the café business is failing due to a food scandal involving a salmonella outbreak years ago.
From the outset, it is clear that Kwek centers the human drama of the film on the relationship between Onassis and his son Popoy (played by Christian Wong). Eager to provide a better life for Popoy in developed Singapore, Onassis tries his best to make ends meet, growing increasingly frustrated at each turn when his money runs out and his application for a Singaporean IC gets rebuffed by the authorities. There is great potential for Kwek to utilize the outsider figure of Onassis to probe the failings of society through a trenchant social critique of how the marginalized are slighted in affluent Singapore.
However, Onassis’ humanity is partially denied to him through the film’s cynical bartering of stereotypes of the outsiders in our society: Onassis’ cultural heritage is (predictably) reduced to a sentimental backstory of selling adobo, Manila is painted by Onassis to be a place of inefficiency and corruption, and there is the somewhat uncharitable reference by Sky to a hostage situation in the Philippines turning into a soap opera. As if to drive home the point, Onassis’ assistant at his café is a PRC worker, and Onassis implies at one point that the salmonella outbreak could have been caused by a mainland Chinese cook because they (the Chinese) put dangerous chemicals into their food all the time. One might argue that Kwek plays up these stereotypes for dramatic effect and lighthearted comic relief, but these clichéd, one-dimensional representations of Filipinos and Chinese people reduce to some degree our identification with Onassis’ struggle and deflect our attention away from problematic societal attitudes towards foreign workers which cause his desperation and disenfranchisement.
Much of the best moments in Unlucky Plaza come from how Kwek uses Onassis’ narrative to expose the insecurities and hypocrisies of the other characters. Although Sky uses his motivational seminars to harangue his audience, preying on their desire to get rich quick, he himself is revealed to be nothing more than a fraudulent poseur as he gets into trouble with a Chinese loanshark syndicate for borrowing an extravagant amount of money. His wife Michelle (played by Judee Tan) is a disgruntled teacher who dreams of escape from her loveless marriage and the trauma of losing her child. The illicit nature of her desires is emphasized in an unsubtle sexual scene involving her pastor Tong Wen (played by Shane Mardjuki). The film reveals the unbridgeable gap between the public and private personas of these characters, highlighting that it is precisely this gap that structures their neuroses and antisocial drives.
Caught between their desires and the need to maintain a veneer of respectability, they turn towards criminality: Sky borrows money illegally and abets the loanshark in acts of vandalism against the house he needs to sell, Michelle heartlessly cheats Onassis of ten thousand dollars which she needs to escape with Tong Wen, and the pastor poses as a property agent to carry out the scam against Onassis. Kwek here indicts not only his characters for their thoughtlessness and selfishness, but also the larger society for its easy glorification of wealth and insubstantial flashiness, and its various hypocrisies which lie at the heart of its political and economic structures. Read in this way, each character in the film becomes an outsider through his or her straddling the boundaries between socially-sanctioned and illicit behaviours and desires. It is in these moments that the film handles satire and social commentary with a deft touch, allowing the audience to look into the emptiness that the characters carry within themselves.
However, it is Onassis the biggest outsider who commits the transgressive act of kidnapping Sky, Michelle, Tong Wen and the loanshark, demanding a helicopter to take Popoy and him out of Singapore. Similar to Shylock, Onassis intends to exact his own ‘pound of flesh’, or hand of each of his hostages, if the police do not meet his demands. Onassis’ act ironically brings to light Michelle’s relationship with Tong Wen, uncovering the layers of deception at the heart of Sky and Michelle’s failed marriage. Kwek brilliantly positions Onassis’ kidnapping as a way in which uncomfortable truths are exposed, not only with respect to Michelle’s infidelity, but also the xenophobic tendencies of Singaporeans towards outsiders: Onassis’ café in Lucky Plaza is wrecked by an angry mob incensed by his actions. The unsettling role of the outsider is displayed here, as he or she is able to destabilize the norms of society and reveal ugly attitudes and truths which normally lie hidden underneath its façade.
Viewing the film, one ultimately feels that if Kwek had taken his material further in this direction, a more socially observant film could have emerged. However, Unlucky Plaza is unfortunately let down by an ending that unrealistically resolves almost all contradictions which trap Onassis in the first place. His erstwhile vulgar and demanding landlady offers him the old rent rate if he surrenders, and his hostages save his life when he is about to surrender. More implausibly, Onassis is only jailed for a short period of time for kidnapping (a capital offence in Singapore) and business in his café picks up after media publicity. The film even stages a talk show where Onassis, Sky and Michelle come together to discuss their experience, marital friction between the latter two seemingly resolved. If the philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek is right in claiming that cinema stages fantasy for its audience, then the ending of Unlucky Plaza depicts a Singapore which has accepted and integrated the outsider who has, in the past, rocked the foundations of its social security. By making its main character wealthy, allowing him to succeed in Singapore’s capitalist economy, the film shores up and leaves intact the structures of society which it had somewhat ventured to critique earlier on, reconciling all tensions and frustrations which made Onassis such a compelling character.
And yet, Onassis’ application for a Singaporean IC is still pending when the film ends. Kwek leaves this issue hanging, as if to bring up once again Onassis’ unresolved status as outsider. For us, it is through this gap in the film that we are left to ponder on what this film could have potentially been, had Kwek followed through on the subversive potential which the outsider brings to our sense of identity and consciousness, both personally and politically.
words by: Ian Tan
We couldn’t decide which trailer to choose, so we decided to share the link of both instead! Watch the trailers of Unlucky Plaza here: the first brings out its dark comedy and the second highlights the dramatic and suspenseful nature of the film and the issues it deals with.
“Gather around, I’ll tell you a story.” Drawn by these seven magical words, a small huddle of children creep forward, wide-eyed in their curiosity. Let’s sit with the children for a while – draw closer, the wind is loud and the fire is going strong. It’s alright, the children won’t notice our presence, they are captured by their grandfather’s tale.
“I was a sailor once, when I was young. Ah, but that was such a long time ago – I was a sailor when I met your grandma, as a matter of fact, but that’s not a story for today.
“This happened before I met her, anyway. We were coming home, almost in our country’s waters, when a storm shook. Nothing we couldn’t handle, o’course, the Taygeta was built better’n that, she’s a stout boat, but some men got mighty scared that they wouldn’t be going back to their wives after all.
“Well, we made it out alright. When we checked the navigation, however, we were lost, blown off course and we didn’t know how to get back. The captain puttered around below deck, tried to find our way, but the storm had messed around with our equipment and barely anything worked right.
“Praying must have worked, because we came across a small bay. In order to anchor the ship we needed deeper waters, so we went around the bay, and that’s when we saw them, on the rocks.”
Here one of the children pipes up, one of the older children, but full of active imagination. “Mermaids, Grandpa?” His question is met with hissed shushes, but we smile because we know better; that a child’s imagination is bright and innocent and should be encouraged.
His grandfather’s eyes darken. “Child, if there is one thing I never want to see again, it’s mermaids. Vicious, heartless, child-drowners, them.” He spits, disgusted, into the fire, and continues.
“At first, we thought them harmless. Just a bunch of women swimming, that was all. A little dangerous, perhaps, but they seemed to know what they were doing. The moment they spotted us, though, a collective shriek rose up, and they dove beneath the waves.
“We thought we’d scared them away, but no. A moment later, they resurfaced and clambered onto the rocks, and that’s when we realized – instead of legs, they had fish-tails, scales sparkling in the sunlight. They weren’t all fish, a couple were seahorse-tails, snake-tails, even a small shark.
“They smiled at us, bared their sharp teeth. We tried to turn away, but then they began singing, and it was like nothing I’d ever heard. Their song was beautiful, but terrifying and deadly all at once, and we all knew without a doubt that those sirens intended to captivate us and lure us to our deaths.”
Hear the creak of footsteps behind us, see the children turning, faces dismayed as they know what their father will say.
“Stop your nonsense tales, Father,” the young man admonishes gruffly, “they are not true and you are scaring the children.” “But, Papa!” A clamour of voices rise, their little owners eager to hear of the sirens and their grandfather’s no doubt daring escape. Their mother arrives to back them up, placing a gentle hand on her husband’s shoulder.
“They are children, they dream and fear well. Let them have their story.” Their grandfather’s tale is over, however – he gathers the smallest child onto his lap. “It is late, I shall not bore you. I saw a mean old bobcat the other day…”
Their grandfather’s story ends here. But what of their father? A fisherman by trade, he knows the great watery rage that is the sea. We will follow him outside, to the moon-washed beach. He’s troubled, and rightly so. Business has not been good recently, and providing for his wife, seven children, and his father is growing ever harder. He has not said anything to his family, they would get worried. He can almost see his wife, worried and chiding, “Lachlan, you should have said so earlier. I would have done what I could.”
Small footsteps patter up the stretch of sand towards us, a small cry of pain uttered as the child steps on a stray pebble. Lachlan spins around. It is his smallest child.
“Ríonach, my love, what are you doing out here?” He bends down, arms outstretched. “Mama told me to come get you,” she gasps, stopping briefly to catch her breath, plump hands reaching out to him, still a distance away from him.
“I’d like a little time to myself,” he tells her, and that’s when she appears to slip on the rocks, although they are not wet at all – there is a splash, and a wail, and he lunges for her, but his child, his darling, she is gone. Lachlan springs to the water’s edge, and he hears soft laughter on the wind. He stares at the sea, bewildered and horrified, and when his gaze passes briefly over you, you can almost feel this father’s fright and anger. Where is Ríonach?
Hours pass, spent searching the seas and diving, and Lachlan’s family, with the exception of his father, come out to help. Voices fill the night, but still no Ríonach. Eventually, they have to admit defeat, and they return home.
His father glances at him knowingly. “You can’t find her. She’s been taken, further and deeper than you and your little fishing boat could ever reach.” It takes all of Lachlan’s willpower not to rush over and shake his father until his teeth rattle in his skull and demand how he can get his child back. “I told you,” he continues, “they’ll do anything they can to get their hands on a child to turn into one of them.”
Lachlan glances around helplessly, eyes settling pleadingly on his wife. Sionann will know what it takes to calm him, to assure him that everything will be alright – but she is looking equally lost, eyes drifting back and forth as though she will find Ríonach hiding in a corner, ready to jump out at them. No, we cannot help, the child is far beyond our reach.
The family drifts on in a daze, unable to comprehend the loss of their youngest. Lachlan, especially, because she was so close and he could have caught her. Sionann has started leaving the children in their grandfather’s care and wandering down to the beach, his father reports, but that’s understandable. The children are the most affected, all of them refusing to go near the water.
Lachlan has started blaming his wife, just a little bit. Of all the people she had to send out for him, did it have to be little Ríonach? Could strong Aidan not have done? Or Muirenn, the strongest swimmer? He casts angry glances in her direction occasionally, but she appears not to have noticed.
This afternoon, the sun beats heavily down on Lachlan’s back. He’s back early, more so than usual, because the catch has not been good. That is alright, because in a few days the fish will be more abundant.
Sionann is not at home. The children tell him, she’s gone out again, despite the heat. Lachlan heads outside, wishing for the comfort of his wife.
There, see, a silhouette, in the distance, Sionann’s, no doubt. Lachlan’s pace quickens, then a head pops out of the water in front of Sionann. Lachlan stops. If it is a person swimming, he would prefer not to disturb them. Socialising is not his forte.
He sits down, feet dangling in the cool water, eyes trained on his wife. She exchanges words with the figure in front of her, and glances around. Lachlan is hidden by the bushes, so she does not see him. Later, when he considers this, maybe it would have been better to have revealed himself before then.
Sionann is doing something peculiar – surely she is not stepping out of her skin! Lachlan cannot believe his eyes, but that is exactly what she is doing. Her skin peels off like a coat, and she slides smoothly into the sea.
A coldness encircles his ankle, and it is all Lachlan can do not to scream in surprise. “My, my. Spying on your wife, hmm?” The voice is cool and musical, and Lachlan turns to face a woman, half-risen out of the water. Her hair is long and red, seaweed tangled in it, her eyes large and arresting. Lachlan cannot tear his gaze away, but then a shimmer almost blinds him.
It is her tail. The woman, still holding on to his foot, has a tail. Lachlan gapes. “You – my father – my child - ”
She smiles and shrugs. “The small one? She makes a beautiful siren. My gratitude to your wife.” Lachlan now knows that his father has told the truth, and that these man-eating creatures do exist.
A seal comes up behind the siren, and nudges her tail. She turns, addressing the animal. “He was spying on you.” The seal regards him, and speaks.
“I’m sorry, my love. We are sisters, and they demanded a sacrifice. I cannot go against their wishes.”
A selkie, one of the seal-skinned sea-folk, gazes up at him with the soft eyes of his wife.
Another shimmer of scales, and a familiar face pops up beside the seal’s. “Sorry, Papa. Grandpa was right.”
words by: Tania Leong
illustration by: Kate Leiper
When the original ‘Old Boy’ came out in 2003, it met with critical acclaim almost instantaneously (and for good reason). Not only was it a dense meditation on the nature of revenge, but it was also a giddily kinetic action movie. Expertly directed by Park Chan Wook, CNN has named it as one of the best Asian films ever made. Even notoriously finicky film critic Roger Ebert heaped praise on the movie, calling it a “powerful film… because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare”.
Exactly a decade later, acclaimed American director Spike Lee released a remake of ‘Old Boy’. Unsurprisingly, the movie was ravaged by critics (myself included), who saw the movie as a cheap and soulless remake. One of my favourite movie critics, Bob “Moviebob” Chipman famously asserted that “you can make a film out of almost anything”, and this hold true for remakes as well. However, a good remake needs to understand two essential truths in order to succeed:
1. The remake needs a voice of its own.
2. The remake needs to understand the context in which it is situated.
Sadly, the ‘Old Boy’ remake failed to grasp these two things, and failed miserably as a result. This was the inspiration of my haiku, encapsulated by me saying that the movie lacked both “Soul” and “Seoul”.
Remakes need a voice of their own
Not many are aware of this, but the original ‘Old Boy’ was part of a larger whole. It was the second film in a trilogy that would eventually be called Park Chan Wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy”. While the three films could easily stand as separate films in their own right, the thematic thread that ties them all together makes for an interesting study on the multi-faceted nature of revenge. Viewers are left with questions like “What is revenge?” and “Is revenge ever justified?”
In a sense, the original ‘Old Boy’ had an unfair advantage, because it was located within the context of a larger trilogy, which gave it the freedom to explore specific aspects of the revenge motif. Unfortunately, the new film stands on its own, crippling it right from the beginning. It did not have the time nor the space to explore everything that it needed to do, instead opting to sacrifice a large bulk of the screen time to generic action set pieces.
In addition, the stomach-churning reveal in the final act of the original ‘Old Boy’ has already been known to most movie viewers for at least a decade, which again disadvantages Spike Lee. Much like how ‘The Sixth Sense’ cannot hold up for more than one viewing, the remake of ‘Old Boy’ tries to pour new wine into an old wineskins. There is simply no incentive for viewers of the original to watch the remake. Even if they did, the reveal in the film’s third act no longer holds as much shock value as watching the original. The “updated” ending became piecemeal at best.
Seen in this light, the remake of ‘Old Boy’ can thus be read as a mercenary attempt by Hollywood to cash in on an unknown Asian film that proved to be successful in a hope to replicate its success in a Western market. Beyond financial reasons, it has little reason to exist – a soulless and empty movie.
Remakes need to understand context
As alluded to in the Haiku, the ‘Old Boy’ remake lacked “Seoul”, shorthand for saying that it does not understand its new context. One glaring example of this is in the iconic hammer fight sequence of the original, where Oh Dae-Su dispatches a whole gang of bat and club wielding thugs with a hammer. As a way of paying homage to the original, Spike Lee has actor Josh Brolin wield a hammer in an almost shot-for-shot copy of the hammer fight (As a side note, the entire film feels like a frame-for-frame retake).
Here is a case where context needs to be considered. In the original, it makes complete sense for the thugs to be armed with bats and clubs, given how restrictive the gun laws are in South Korea. However, the same does not hold true in America, where guns and assault rifles would no doubt be easier to procure. Shouldn’t the henchmen be all armed with pistols and rifles, given that a large bulk of the film is situated squarely in an American urban space? The audience is asked to take this in good faith, and this becomes problematic, as American sensibilities clearly conflict with the movie’s Korean roots.
At the end of the day, the failure of the remake can perhaps be summarised in one word – laziness. The 2013 ‘Old Boy’ fails to understand that even remakes need to work hard to stay relevant, and should try to add something new to the original whenever possible. As a person who cares passionately about movies, I am glad that the movie failed. It assures me that new viewers cannot be won over by old tricks.
And to Spike Lee, I simply say: “try harder, old chap”.
