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the films of jack neo 145 CHAPTER FIVE IMAGINING THE CHINESE COMMUNITY THROUGH THE FILMS OF JACK NEO In 2005, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts named filmmaker Jack Neo (b. 1960) one of five recipients of the Cultural Medallion, an annual award that since 1979 has rec- ognized individuals who have ‘attained artistic excellence’ in the fields of literary arts, performing arts, visual arts, and film. The decision to honor Neo—as well as pop musician Dick Lee (who had been a judge on the Singapore Idol competition, discussed in Chapter 3)—with such a prestigious award sparked a heated debate in the media and arts community as to whether pop culture should be considered an appropriate field for such an award and whether the two entertainers really deserved it. Straits Times film correspondent Ong Sor Fern regards Neo as the only director with a “grasp of the psyche of the average Sin- gaporean and empathy for the man in the street.” But she argues that Neo was a “populist”—rather than an “artistic”—choice for the award. While he is a competent filmmaker and has proven himself commercially, there is still much room for improvement where technical and aesthetic abilities are concerned, and his films have not had enough time to prove themselves as enduring works of art (Ong 2005c). Neo, for example, has not been able to de- velop his cinematic technique beyond the ‘television skit’ format that he excels in. Too many scenes in his films are overly melodra- matic. And every one of his films concludes, often abruptly, with a predictably easy and unfeasibly happy ending (Ong 2006d). Play- wright and law professor Eleanor Wong points to the “muddled benchmarks” that authorities are using to measure the “creative industry” and asks, “Is the medallion about commercial success or artistic merit?” (quoted in Chow 2005, 4). Arguing against taking a snobbish attitude toward popular and even populist art, Straits Times entertainment editor Yeow Kai Chai claims that Neo deserves the award because he “touches a (raw) nerve by articulating the concerns of heartlanders, who make up the heart of the country” 146 chapter five (Yeow 2005). David Chew, an arts reporter for Today, describes Neo’s films as capturing “the tone of the so-called heartlands and the nation’s psyche … [adding] to the vernacular, becoming an intrin- sic part of Singapore’s pop culture” (Chew 2005, 40). Time Maga- zine columnist Bryan Walsh (2002) describes Neo as the “subversive underlying id” in censorious Singapore, who is willing to “put on the screen what his audience actually thinks, feels and even how they talk.” Singapore Film Society chairman Kenneth Tan (not this book’s author), who sat on the Cultural Medallion assessment pan- el, believes that Neo’s films are “representative of Singaporean culture. And in developing a film industry, we want to develop something that is distinguishably Singaporean—and Jack’s films are it” (quoted in Chew 2005, 40). As a Singaporean feature film director or writer, Neo has aver- aged an impressive output of one film a year since his first, Mon- ey No Enough, in 1998. With box-office takings of more than S$5.8 million, it continues to be the third top grossing film of all time in Singapore after Titanic (1997) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997); and the highest grossing made-in-Singapore film. The sec- ond and third highest grossing Singapore-made films are I Not Stu- pid Too in 2006 (more than S$4.2 million) and I Not Stupid in 2002 (more than S$3.8 million) respectively (Singapore Film Commission n. d.). All three films were written by Neo, who started out in 1980 as a Chinese-language television comedian. Neo the film script- writer saturates his dialogues with ribald and irreverent humor peppered with puns in Mandarin and Hokkien, the kind of humor that appeals especially to a Chinese-speaking mass audience and, in particular, the segment that feels increasingly alienated from Singapore’s seemingly Westernized orientation and pretensions. Along with his comic and sometimes bittersweet portrayals of everyday life in the heartlands as well as his satirical jibes at both govern- ment and society, it is probably Neo’s low-brow comic formula that explains the commercial success he has enjoyed and is admired for, even by some opinion-leaders in the arts community. Singaporean humor columnist Tay Yek Keak believes “real comedy is that which aims at the masses,” citing Neo’s films as a successful brand name in the comedy-for-the-masses market (quoted in Ong 2007a). Film scholars Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar note how Neo’s films, circulated primarily in the local mainstream commercial market, .

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