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2002-08-20 - 7:23 p.m. Alfian: I agree that Singapore society recognises the heartlander as a visible feature. There have been attempts to articulate this 'heatlander' ethos, most notably by contrasting it against its dialectic, the ‘cosmopolitan’. I recall that the Straits Times did a spread on Ah Bengs, the ‘Auntie’, the small business shopkeepers, all written in a celebratory tone. But again, as much as I think the heartlander is a visible entity, I think it’s also one that is only partially visible. Minah: I remember the Auntie article. So multiracial. The Chinese Auntie is the Ah Soh, and the Malay Auntie is the Makcik. I forgot the Indian Auntie is what. But it was very informative, they said the Auntie is everywhere and always carry umbrellas in their handbags. Alfian: I might even go as far as to say that the ‘heartlander’ is an unstable category, whose characteristics are modified—subsumed or exaggerated--as a matter of political expediency. The same goes for that other creature, the ‘cosmopolitan’. You know already what I think of the whole thing—a case of Orwellian doublethink, sidestepping important categories like ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, ‘middle class’, ‘working class’, in effect creating a political party which can represent two separate constituencies. Semantics is at the heart of our politics, as evident by the popular understanding (or misunderstanding) of terms such as ‘Marxist’, ‘National Day’ (a day devoid of any pro-independencem narrative), ‘government’, ‘patriotism’. It’s also interesting how each constituency swells its ranks depending on the kinds of policies the State wishes to pursue. The cosmopolitan comes to the forefront when there is rhetoric on globalisation and a knowledge-based economy. The threat of a digital divide between the ‘knows’ and ‘know-nots’ is accepted as an unfortunate but somehow remediable risk; what takes precedence is the cosmopolitan’s will to the Utopia of the ‘world class’. But on issues such as censorship, the idea of the heartlander, this silent majority of conservatives, is summoned, and their reservations will be appropriated to extinguish any tentative sparks towards liberalisation. But what do you think, personally, Minah, of this heartlander-cosmopolitan divide? Minah: I remember got one time I was reading the newspapers, and on the front page they wrote about how Internet is going to make a lot of people rich. And then on the same page got announcement of how much they are going to give out for the year’s TOTO lottery draw. And I thought, Singapore is very good, got meritocracy, because heartlander and cosmopolitan both have a chance at making money. Alfian: Let’s look at other representations of the heartlander. That ‘Heartlanders’ series you’re talking about might be an interesting case study, but now let’s look at say, other local television productions. There’s the TV drama ‘Growing Up’, and the sitcom ‘Under One Roof’. I’m going to focus more on ‘Under One Roof’, since it’s about a family whose class composition is more or less static, unlike ‘Growing Up’, where their fortunes change over several decades. The family in ‘Under One Roof’, for me, is unreal. The father cites anecdotes from ancient Chinese history which the grown-up children listen to attentively, the Malay and Indian neighbours actually drop by for a chat, and to entrench claims to being heartlanders, the father owns a minimart, which serves as a nodal point in their interactions with the 'heartland community'. So here we have a well-adjusted family living in Bishan, surrounded by IKEA furniture and friendly neighbours. Because much of the action occurs in the Tan household, or the minimart, we are given selective frames of what HDB life is—we can even perceive the ‘roof’ in the sitcom’s title as the ceiling over the Tan family home, denying its dual aspect as both ceiling to the Tans as well as floor to the residents who live above. What’s missing from the picture are the void decks, the common corridors, the lift lobbies, the spaces of transit and chance encounters. The common corridor, for me, is a much more potent motif of the ‘heartland’ than individual household units, because it represents much of the unmanageable plurality that HDB life is. This avoidance of the ‘reality’ of the common corridor (and its onslaught of difference) is what eventually leads to a neurotic obsession with privacy. And ultimately, the ‘secret’ of the heartland remains an enigma even to heartlanders themselves. Minah: You make the corridor sound so scary! But my common corridor is not like that what. Sometimes when I help my mother wash the corridor I will also help a bit to wash the next door neighbour’s corridor. Sometimes the neighbour will also do the same. In Malay, we call it the gotong royong spirit. Last time, in kampung, they have this gotong royong spirit. Everyone will help his fellow human being. If that human being needs the help. Alfian: You know, I think the more ‘realistic’ depictions of the heartland can be found in that TV show, ‘Crimewatch’. It’s interesting how it’s one of those TV shows where dialect is permissible, of course accompanied by subtitles. And the actors chosen for the re-enactments are unknown faces—some permed, pockmarked, some with eyebrow tattoos, broken veins. I remember one of the first times I watched an episode, and how I was struck by the representations of what I thought had always been missing from the frame: the grittiness, the dim corridors, the graffitied lifts, joss-paper-marked pavements. All this was on Crimewatch before Eric Khoo came up with his fly-on-the-wall ‘12 Storeys’. And I remember the curious sensation I had: I recognised its authenticity, and at the same time I recognised the alienation I would feel if I were present in such an ‘authentic’ environment. Unlike urban ghettoes, or suburbia, or even kampungs, I am convinced that there is something in the HDB heartland that will remain stubbornly foreign, probably because we haven’t yet grasped the reality of multiculturalism, of plural communities. And thus everything that is not circumscribed by our four walls becomes alien: religious symbols, people’s pets, funerals, weddings, exorcisms, domestic abuse, all constituted as a kind of violence, a violence against the Self. And crime, as portrayed on the ‘Crimewatch’ series, falls into this sphere of violence.
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