Singapore gay documentaries - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Past Restrictions

On 15 July 1996, the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA

SBA

SBA may stand for:* Survivable Branch Appliance* Santa Barbara Airport* Santa Barbara Airlines* SBA Towers, radio masts and towers* School-based assessment, a programme of Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education which composes parts of the marks...

) issued Notification no. 2400/96 which specified a Code of Practice which covered not only the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, but also all broadcast media, including television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

. The foreword to the Code of Practice stated:

"The Singapore Broadcasting Authority Act (Cap. 297) makes it the statutory duty of the Singapore Broadcasting Authority to ensure that nothing is included in any broadcasting service which is against public interest or order, national harmony or which offends against good taste or decency."

Among the material to be prohibited were:

"Contents which depict or propagate sexual perversions such as homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

, lesbianism, and paedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...

."

Owing to the ignorance of the SBA

SBA

that homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

and lesbianism were not 'sexual perversions' according to prevailing international medical opinion but variations of the norm, and widespread public dissatisfaction with the vague, inaccurate and unnecessarily restrictive wording of the Code of Practice, it was revised on 1 November 1997 to state:

"whether the material advocates homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

or lesbianism [sic], or depicts or promotes incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...

, paedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...

, bestiality and necrophilia
Necrophilia
Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...

".

While being a quantum leap from incorrectly labelling homosexuality a sexual perversion, the non-specification of what exactly "advocates homosexuality" made it a taboo subject for television documentaries for 7 years following the first issuing of the Code.

The penalty for media licencees flouting the Code was a hefty fine, as Channel i

SPH MediaWorks Channel i

SPH MediaWorks Channel i as called by the name Channel i is a defunct Singapore English language television channel which began broadcasting on 20 May 2001. It was formerly known as SPH MediaWorks TV Works as called name TV Works...

, the now-defunct English-language sister channel of Channel U

MediaCorp TV Channel U

MediaCorp Channel U or Channel U is the second Mandarin Chinese channel in Singapore and was started officially began on-air broadcasting, inaugurated opened television studio station's transmission first established since on 1 January 2005...

, discovered after it aired an interview with Anne Heche

Anne Heche

Anne Celeste Heche is an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She started her career on the daytime soap opera Another World, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Heche gradually landed supporting roles in feature films, and in 1997 appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer,...

in 2003. During the interview, Heche spoke about her lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

relationship with Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American stand-up comedienne, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and was also a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season....

, amongst other things. Channel i

SPH MediaWorks Channel i

was subsequently fined $15,000 by SBA

SBA

, the broadcasting watchdog, for "justifying, promoting and glamourising homosexuality".

Crunch Time

It was only in May 2003 that the very first locally-produced television documentary dealing with homosexuality as its main subject was broadcast on Singaporean airwaves. It was a homophobic, 30-minute episode in a Mandarin-language series called "Crunch Time 2" shown on Channel U

MediaCorp TV Channel U

, a television station owned by Singapore Press Holdings

Singapore Press Holdings

Singapore Press Holdings Limited is a media organisation in Singapore with businesses in print, Internet and new media, television and radio, outdoor media, and property. SPH has over 4,000 employees, including a team of approximately 1,000 journalists, including correspondents operating around...

. The series was advertised in The Straits Times

The Straits Times

The Straits Times is an English language daily broadsheet newspaper based in Singapore currently owned by Singapore Press Holdings . It is the country's highest-selling paper, with a current daily circulation of nearly 400,000...

which promoted it as one that featured the turning points in the lives of 12 people including a loan shark

Loan shark

A loan shark is a person or body that offers unsecured loans at illegally high interest rates to individuals, often enforcing repayment by blackmail or threats of violence....

, an unwed mother and a drug addict.

The particular program featured actors re-enacting the supposedly true-life account of a young, masculine gay Singaporean man cruising for sex in public swimming pools and toilets. It reinforced the misconception that homosexuality resulted from having an unhappy home, parents who constantly fight, and being sexually abused. In this case, the protagonist was only 6 years old when he was asked by an adult female to perform sexual acts with a girl his age. The episode wound up with an interview with a spokesman from Choices, a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

counselling group from the Church of our Saviour

Church of Our Saviour

Church of Our Saviour is a baroque church in Copenhagen, Denmark, most famous for its corkscrew spire with an external winding staircase that can be climbed to the top, offering extensive views over central Copenhagen...

(COOS) in Queenstown

Queenstown, Singapore

Queenstown1 is one of the early housing estates in Singapore, built before Toa Payoh and Ang Mo Kio, and was a test bed for much of Singapore's public housing...

which helps "straighten" out gay lives, which was the eventual outcome for the gay man in the story. He was depicted as having been "successfully'" converted through counselling from a dissatisfied, unfulfilled homosexual to a man happily married to a female spouse and producing a son.

The negative and stereotypical depiction of homosexuality in the program prompted an online petition which garnered more than 200 signatories over the ensuing weekend. It probably had a significant effect as the episode was the last time a homophobic documentary was aired in Singapore. However, the overwhelmingly influential factor in ending televised homophobia

Homophobia

Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...

was Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong

Goh Chok Tong

Goh Chok Tong is the Senior Minister of Singapore and the chairman of the central bank of Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He also served as the second Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore from 28 November 1990 to 12 August 2004, succeeding Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime...

's statements in Time magazine in July 2003 about reversing anti-gay hiring policies in the Civil Service.

Read a video storyboard of the documentary:http://www.geocities.com/sporegaydocus02/CrunchTimeComics/CrunchTimeComics1.htm

View a compressed video of the original broadcast:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-881569025044039994

OK, No Problem

In a 180-degree turnaround just 2 months after the above documentary, which aimed to encourage homosexuals to turn straight, Channel U aired a groundbreaking episode in the info-tainment hands-on series "OK, No Problem" at 7:30 p.m. on 30 July 2003. This time, it sought instead to educate the public that one could not judge a man's sexual orientation merely from his external appearance and to foster understanding and acceptance of homosexuals. Popular compère Chuan Yi Fong was filmed in a hawker centre

Hawker centre

A hawker centre or cooked food centre is the name given to open-air complexes in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Riau Islands housing many stalls that sell a variety of inexpensive food...

in Ang Mo Kio

Ang Mo Kio

Ang Mo Kio（宏茂桥） is a heartland new town located in north central Singapore, and is generally within the North-East Region. It contains many of the common features of the island nation's neighbourhoods, e.g. hawker centres, wet markets and HDB housing blocks. Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien...

where she asked random diners about their opinions on homosexuality. A range of positive and negative views were offered.

A live telephone interview with Dr. Tan Chong Kee, who was introduced as having written a thesis on homosexuality in Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, was interpolated during a voting session by onlookers. The latter were asked to pick which, amongst 3 chosen men, they thought were gay, judging from externalities. After the votes were cast, it was revealed to the audience's surprise that none of the 3 were gay. In fact, one had brought along his wife and baby son.

The highlight of the episode was the appearance of an actual gay man named Anthony who was initially hidden behind a black curtain. After a suspenseful emergence to face a wall of curious onlookers, he spoke emotionally about his own struggles as a homosexual and how he hoped society would accept them. He also publicly thanked Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong

Goh Chok Tong

for his recent announcement that openly homosexual individuals would now be employed in the Civil Service. Anthony choked back his tears as he spoke, causing the compère's eyes to also redden, and members of the audience to listen sympathetically. For his courage, Anthony was presented with a bouquet of flowers and received a huge round of applause.

Watch a compressed video of the original broadcast: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6415708530651271619, and the drama segment preceding it, which dealt with a gay man who experienced discrimination in applying for a job: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3539403007785061349

Detik

Later, on the same night of 30 July 2003 at 8:30 p.m., the Malay

Malay language

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...

-language channel Suria

Suria

Suria, also Syria, is the female deification of supposedly good flowing water, conceived as a weaning Mother goddess, in ancient Celtic polytheism. She was worshipped in Roman Britain and altar-stones raised to her have been recovered at various sites in the United Kingdom. Her name may be derived...

aired another documentary on homosexuality in its Detik (meaning "a second in time") series. The particular episode was entitled "Haruskah golongan Homoseksual diterima?" (Should Homosexuals be accepted?)

It featured interviews with a Malay gay man named Helmi and a Malay

Malay people

Malays are an ethnic group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula, including the southernmost parts of Thailand, the east coast of Sumatra, the coast of Borneo, and the smaller islands which lie between these locations...

lesbian named Zac in which they recounted their self-discovery and personal relationships. People on the street were asked whether they could accept homosexuals and a diverse range of negative to positive opinions were expressed.

It revealed to the Malay

Malay people

community, the presence of websites providing support for Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

homosexuals. Figures of authority queried for their views included Dr. Francis Ngui (President, Singapore Psychiatric Association) and Ustaz Fatris Bakaram (Assistant Mufti

Mufti

A mufti is a Sunni Islamic scholar who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law . In religious administrative terms, a mufti is roughly equivalent to a deacon to a Sunni population...

and Head of the Mufti

Mufti

A mufti is a Sunni Islamic scholar who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law . In religious administrative terms, a mufti is roughly equivalent to a deacon to a Sunni population...

Office, Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura

Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura

The Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura , also known as the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore is a statutory board in Singapore...

, MUIS

MUIS

MUIS is an abbreviation for:*Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura*Mongol Ulsyn Ikh Surguuli, The National University of Mongolia...

or Singapore Islamic Religious Council).

All in all, the programme tried its best to present a balanced view of homosexuality without moralising or injecting any subliminal message.

Read a Malay transcript of the programme with selected video still-frames:http://web.archive.org/web/20091027104316/http://geocities.com/groyn88/Detik001/Detik001.htm
Watch a compressed video of the original broadcast: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2704566519844141051

Inside Out

On 23 February 2005, Mandarin-language Channel U

MediaCorp TV Channel U

broadcast its third programme dealing with homosexuality in the 'Inside Out' current affairs series. The topic of the episode was "Do homosexuals have space for their activities?"

This programme was a landmark in that it was the first time that the views of leading gay activists, in this case Eileena Lee and Charles Tan from People Like Us 3

People Like Us 3

People Like Us , is the main gay equality lobby group in Singapore. Having been twice rejected by the government board which approves or prohibits organisations, the Registrar of Societies, it is now in its third incarnation as "PLU3"...

(PLU3), were given a relatively lengthy airing on primetime television. Artistic Co-Director Nelson Chia

Nelson Chia

Nelson Chia is a Singaporean actor/director/lecturer who has taken on many roles on stage and on TV. He snared his first major TV role in the drama Together Whenever, which was aired on SPH MediaWorks Channel U, alongside Erica Lee. Chia has been working in theatre both as an actor and director...

from Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble, a drama company which had staged several plays with homosexual themes and assisted in producing the episode itself, also presented a pro-gay voice for theatre in particular and society in general. Chia expressed, with great conviction, his disquietude with the contradictions between Singapore's liberalisation drive and the recent curbing of public gay spaces, despite the fact that he himself was a heterosexual family man.

An anonymous gay man named "David" was also interviewed at length, in which he doubted Singaporeans' general level of acceptance of homosexuals.

The programme was thought to have been produced to give an opportunity for the gay community to vent its concerns after an official clampdown on gay parties like Nation.04 and Snowball

Snowball

A snowball is a spherical object made from snow, usually created by scooping snow with the hands, and compacting it into a roughly fist-sized ball. The snowball is often used to engage in games, such as snowball fights. Snowball fights are usually light-hearted and involve throwing snowballs at...

in 2004, presumably as part of a conservative backlash against the rampant spread of HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

infection within the community.

In spite of NUS sociologist Associate Professor Paulin Tay Straughan

Paulin Tay Straughan

Associate Professor Paulin Tay Straughan is an academic and Nominated Member of Parliament in Singapore.She is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore , where she is also the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.She was...

'shttp://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/soc/faculty/staff_pages/pts.htm assertion in the documentary that homosexuals in Singapore enjoyed almost everything their straight counterparts were entitled to, gay community leaders like Alex Au

Alex Au

Alex Au Waipang, also known by his Internet nom de plume as Yawning Bread, is part of the Singapore gay equality movement.He is the author of a website, where he provides analyses of Singaporean politics, culture, gay issues and miscellaneous subjects.-Biography:Au, English-educated and of...

begged to differ.

Watch a compressed video of the original broadcast:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=161078423833262870

Read Yawning Bread's analysis of the documentary:http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2005/yax-417.htm

Portrayal of homosexuals on television

There have always been a sizeable proportion of homosexuals in the broadcast media since the inception of television in Singapore. However, in the early decades, these individuals preferred to remain in the closet due to official policy which sought to restrict gay people from attaining managerial positions on Caldecott Hill

Caldecott Hill

Caldecott Hill is a private housing estate, located along Thomson Road in the Central Region of Singapore. It is synonymous to the growth of the media industry in Singapore....

. It was feared that they would introduce a gay-friendly angle into television broadcasts, which would have the greatest impact on mainstream society that any medium could achieve. (See the section "Past Restrictions" above).

However, as local television and society matured, gay men in the broadcast industry gradually became more assertive and less guarded of their sexuality. Producers began to explore the hitherto taboo

Taboo

A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...

topic of homosexuality by gingerly introducing stereotypical gay male characters into their drama serials. This was done initially in the Chinese language channels, as Singapore produced no English language television dramas in the early years. It was a creative progression as all the major role genres had been worked to death. It was also thought to be interesting to see how the public would react to such novel characters on a medium which penetrated vividly into their very homes.

One of the first such experiments was a mid-1980s Singapore Broadcasting Corporation

Singapore Broadcasting Corporation

Singapore Broadcasting Corporation was a partially privatised mass market media conglomeration, which dominated the entire television and most of the radio broadcasting industry in Singapore during its existence...

(SBC) production on Channel 8

MediaCorp TV Channel 8

MediaCorp Channel 8 is a 24-hour free-to-air Mandarin Chinese general entertainment television channel in Singapore...

, the only Chinese language television channel at the time. It was a daily Mandarin drama serial starring popular actor Li Nan Xing as the main protagonist. He portrayed a handsome, masculine, struggling model who was the love interest of a stereotypically effeminate gay man hopelessly enamoured of Li's male beauty and bent on seducing him. Groundbreaking scenes, never before seen in a local production, included sexily shot close-up sequences of Li's muscular body as he exercised on gym equipment, the lascivious lip-licking of the gay character as he watched Li exercising, the attempted resting of the homosexual character's cheek on Li's sweaty body (see video), staged disco scenes of gay men dancing, including a swimming trunk fashion show, two gay lovers having a tiff in a carpark and an attempt at oral sex

Oral sex

Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a sex partner by the use of the mouth, tongue, teeth or throat. Cunnilingus refers to oral sex performed on females while fellatio refer to oral sex performed on males. Anilingus refers to oral stimulation of a person's anus...

by the gay character on Li in a car.

Audible grunts of apparent disgust could be heard emanating from some homes during the airing of these landmark scenes on primetime slots. In the following weeks, numerous letters of complaint were received by SBC and the serial's introduction of homosexuality spawned several articles in the Chinese press. These factors caused the station to shelve its experimentation with gay subplots for many years.

More acceptable to the general public were cross-dressing comedy skits, especially by superstar comedian Jack Neo

Jack Neo

Jack Neo Chee Keong , PBM, credited as Jack Neo on screen, is a Chinese Singaporean film and television actor, host and director...

and drag icon Kumar

Kumar

Kumār OR Kunwar is a title, a given name or a family name native to India.In many Indian languages, Kumar literally means prince or a young/unmarried male....

, in which the roles they portrayed were 100% female and in which there were no hints of masculine homosexuality. Effeminate mannerisms and behaviour by non-cross-dressing male television artistes, especially in comedic routines, were also well-received, provided they made no references to homosexuality. Over the years, many straight comedians, including portly Moses Ng, performed in drag on television without raising eyebrows.

With the introduction of cable television

Cable television

Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

into Singapore, subscription non-free-to-air channels produced overseas, with their more liberal portrayal of homosexuality in news reports, documentaries and dramas, became accessible to local viewers . These exerted no small impact on the mainstream audience, whose previous parochial outlook was broadened to encompass a much wider horizon.

In 2003, Channel NewsAsia

Channel NewsAsia

Channel NewsAsia is an English language pan-Asian news network based in Singapore and owned by MediaCorp. Started on 1 March 1999 based in Singapore by Television Corporation of Singapore, it was launched internationally on 12 February 2001 as the international broadcasting arm of Channel...

(CNA

CNA

- Organizations :*California Nurses Association*Canadian Nuclear Association*Canadian Nurses Association*CNA Institute for Public Research and Center for Naval Analyses*Center for Transportation and Logistics Neuer Adler*Royal Canadian Numismatic Association...

) pioneered a revolution when it uttered the English words "gay" and "lesbian" for the very first time on local television in its feature report on the Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras

The terms "Mardi Gras" , "Mardi Gras season", and "Carnival season", in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday...

. However, news of foreign gay events was covered more readily, while Singaporean developments were still firmly stuffed in the censorship closet.
External links=

International documentaries dealing with homosexuality shown on Singapore cable television: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6E0F04356A818CE0

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