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thinkagain says...

I don't know how many of you are even aware of this: There is a TV serial on Channel 8 called Daddy At Home. On Friday (6 November 2009), the episode featured a scene where the main character (played by Li Nanxing) signed on unknowingly to be a cleaner/manager of cleaning operations. At this, his friends/colleagues joked that they should start calling him either "manager" or "Aminah." Cue laughter.

'Aminah' is a Malay name for females, and it is not uncommon in Singapore at all, just like 'Siti', 'Farrah,' or 'Nurhaliza.'

I was alerted to this through Malay friends of mine, and I completely share their disgust and shock that such a clearly racist comment could have been made on national television in the guise of comedy and humour.

 

This is the letter I wrote to the Straits Times Forum editor, I hope it gets published!

 

 

I refer to the 6th November screening of the MediaCorp Channel 8 prime-time drama series, Daddy At Home. I am thoroughly appalled by the instance in which the colleagues of the title character (played by Li Nanxing) joked that they should begin calling him “Aminah” since his character now works as a cleaner.

 

The nonchalance with which the name of a Malay woman is used interchangeably with the role of a cleaner shocks me for it reeks of a subtle, yet severe, insensitivity on the part of the Mediacorp scriptwriters, actors, and on-site crew. What this instance has encouraged in the popular imagination is the equation of Malays to occupations of low income and menial labour. How is it that such a glaring comment could have passed the stages of re-writes and checks, if any? Would the actors and crew members on location not have realised this during the filmin g as well?

 

As a teacher, I am doubly outraged that “Singapore’s leading media company” (according to MediaCorp’s corporate website) could let such racist undertones seep through popular, mainstream ‘entertainment’ with a view to profit and gain from what might seem to the company and its scriptwriters as dialogue that reflects the quotidian Singapore experience. If so, then generations of children and young adults who watch these shows regularly have certainly been exposed to potentially racist sentiments that they could easily replicate in the classroom and in their interactions with children of different races.

 

I remind the Channel 8 directors and writers also, that their viewership extends well beyond the Mandarin-speaking population in Singapore. Surely it was a strategic decision on Channel 8‘s part that including English subtitles for these drama shows allows them to reach a non-Mandarin-speaking viewership. With this in mind, then, how can it come to pass that clearly racist comments are written into the script and uttered before the camera?

 

Even if this were an ‘oversight’ on the part of the writers, there is no excuse nor any place in Singapore for racism to even be acceptable whether in private or in the public sphere.

 

I have not been a regular viewer of Channel 8 programmes for several years now, but with this new knowledge of the kind of lax standards that local television possesses, I am undecided as to whether to ignore Channel 8 completely, or to be a more avid viewer and keep an eye out for any future attempts to disrupt the delicate fabric of our multi-racial society. I urge Singaporeans to consider this dilemma as well.

 


 

Filed under: media, race, Singapore, society, television

kcarruthers says...

Just reading NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth by Paul Carr. The entire article by @paulcarr is worth a read, it has some compelling points.

However, one thing popped out at me.  In the excerpt below is a great example of a double standard. An ordinary person is criticized for acting just like a journalist - accused of staying objective & reporting instead of stepping in to help like a human being.

Why is it ok for a journalist to stand by & simply report carnage but not ok for an ordinary person?

 

Even if you’ve seen the footage before, you should watch it again. But this time bear in mind the following: the cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t.

Filed under: media, social media

rugby says...

Rugby - Het Nederlands team heeft een monsterzege geboekt op Letland. Het won in Amsterdam met 57-3. Het was al de zevende overwinning van de rugbyers in de European Nations Cup en het ongeslagen Oranje leidt in divisie 2B. De enige concurrent is Kroatië en in april 2010 nemen beide landen het tegen elkaar op. De winnaar promoveert naar divisie 2A.

via nos.nl

Filed under: Internationaal, Media, wedstrijdverslag

Rob says...

Dr. Richard Schabas, chief medical officer of health for Hastings and Prince Edward Counties in eastern Ontario, said the H1N1 influenza outbreak needs to be put into proper perspective.

About 200,000 people die in Canada every year from all causes combined, including about 4,000 from seasonal flu.

"By the time all the dust has settled on H1N1, somewhere between 200 and 300 people will have died in this country," Schabas said Thursday during a panel on media coverage of H1N1 on CBC-TV's The National.

Schabas criticized the media for not trying to put the story into perspective, and for being "a little too easy to spin sometimes" by public health officials.

"I'm not letting the media off the hook totally, but I think the real villains of the piece here have been those public health officials who have consistently overplayed and overstated the importance of what is happening," he said.

"By the time all is said and done, this is not a major public health event, but you'd never know that from what some people are saying."

via cbc.ca

My beef with the media again is that they tend to have a POV that makes us all helpless.

First of all there is the context - It's usually "Drama" - the sky is falling or the opposite - "Unemployment is a lagging indicator" There is rarely the real context - that in the case of Swine Flu the risks of death are very small as shown by its cycle south of the equator.

Secondly there are the headlines with no context at all - Lots of vaccine - buying the spin. Then No vaccine!

Thirdly - there is no useful advice about what you do if you have the flu - how can you best prepare etc

Lastly - no real examination about what the community can do - how will we support parents etc

The result? People either panic and or switch off.

What is going on in the editors minds? No wonder traditional media is dying. It's not just the web etc, it's this focus on the simplistic and the use of fear. I think it is shameful.

Filed under: Media

mattgroves says...

 

(download)

Filed under: Media, Research, Social Media, Trends

Evan says...

Posting Daily Show clips is the cheapest form of blogging, but this one is in Top-5-All-Time territory.

Filed under: media

Rob says...

Newspapers were dying anyway but the Internet has hastened the process by exposing the newspapers lack of accountability. 

The average schmuck buys a paper and sees it as a product designed to inform him, the customer, about the world around him/her. But in any financial transaction the customer is identified as the person who pays the money, and since newspapers only get 20% of revenue from subscribers this means the subscriber is not the “real” customer. 

Newspapers get 80% of revenue from corporate advertisers, so they are the “real” customers. And since the corporate advertisers don’t take delivery of the newspapers it means the newspaper is not the real product. The real product is the reader, and the newspaper is just a medium (like radio waves or tv signals) that is used to “deliver” the real product (our eyeballs) to the real customers (corporate advertisers). 

Mark Ramsey is someone I read every day - here is a key comment that he picked up on - It's not content - it's delivering an audience.

Commodity news or programs will not do that anymore.

Filed under: Media, Pub Media

Simon says...

On my way to work this morning I passed two newspaper billboards in quick succession. It was for our local paper, the Brighton Argus, and the relationship between the two boards made me chuckle. Unfortunately, I was on the bus and moving past too quickly to get pictures. Here's the longhand version instead.

Billboard 1: COPPELL FAVOURITE FOR SEAGULLS POST

100 metres further down the road...

Billboard 2: COPPELL SAYS NO TO SEAGULLS

How's that for real-time traditional news publishing!? Twitter eat your heart out.

 

Filed under: media, news, newspaper

Ranmaru says...

I just stumbled upon a game I really used to like. Frankly speaking, it's my second favorite video game ever and by far the best game ever made for the PC, at least in my opinion. Deus Ex. When I first played the game (and during the numerous playthroughs after that) I especially liked the Hong Kong chapter, because it had a special kind of atmosphere that really sucked me in. 

For what it's worth, I always loved the atmosphere of huge cities, especially at night. And I love the flair that Asia has. In Deus Ex's Hong Kong chapter, this was both combined. Though when you look at it today, the graphics aren't that fascinating anymore and someone who didn't play the game back in the years when it was top of the hill might not get what I got, but just looking at some screenshots now makes me kinda want to go to Hong Kong (or any other similar city alternatively) again. Googling some pictures of Hong Kong's districts at night gives me the chills.

I think, Deus Ex did quite a good job capturing the atmosphere, at least judging from the pictures. I've never been there so maybe I'm romanticizing a little bit in exaggeration, but living in a city like that is certainly a dream I always have an probably will have forever.

Filed under: media, personal

Evan says...

I grabbed this screenshot from Drudge last week but am only getting around to posting it now. For the non-Drudge readers among you, this was Drudge's headline for the 24 hours or so after Pelosi announced the House health care bill.

"$2.2m a word." Now, that is some trenchant analysis right there, folks. I mean, WOW, Nancy Pelosi must be shaking in her Gucci boots. Let's deconstruct this for a moment:

$2.2m per word is clearly very, very bad. But which would be worse, $3.2m/word, or $1.2m/word? The answer is not as obvious as you think. The problem is the "per" - which implies two variables, in this case, money and words. In the same screenshot above, Drudge also appears to criticize the bill's length - 1,990 pages.

Presumably, Drudge would be pleased (relatively speaking) if Pelosi cut the bill's length in half, to 995 pages. But then the bill would cost $4.4m/word! Which is obviously much scarier than $2.2m/word! Maybe even twice as scary! What are we to think?

Alternatively, Pelosi could reduce the numerator (cost) - let's say by half. Then the bill would cost $1.1m/word, which seems better... but is it? The bill is still 1,990 pages long! And the legislative language (already super-arcane) is presumably half as efficient, making it much harder to read!

Now, you're thinking, that's not quite fair to Drudge. Clearly, he would prefer both a shorter and cheaper bill! So, let's say Pelosi cuts the bill in half, both cost-wise and length-wise. What's the result? Oh no! Still $2.2m per word!

I think Drudge is on to something here. We should judge all legislation - past and future - by their cost per word. Voting Rights Act? Only if it's under $50,000 per word! Social Security? No more than half a million per word!

Why stop with legislation? What about books? Kafka's The Metamorphosis is only 50 pages, but costs $9.95. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is over 700 pages, but costs only $19.95 - clearly a better value! Down with Kafka!

Filed under: media, politics