Cat's Entertainment

Cat’s Entertainment Feline Performance in the Lion City Paul Rae More than sobriquet, more than epithet, “The Lion City” is a translation. In the 14th century, so the legend goes, the Sumatran prince Sang Nila Utama was caught in a storm off the Riau Archipelago in the South China Sea. After tossing his crown into the water, the storm abated, and on the shores of nearby Temasek island, he sighted a good omen: a lion. Coming ashore, he established a thriving settlement and renamed the island Singapura, after the Sanskrit for lion (Singa) and city (Pura). During Singapore’s 40th annual National Day Parade, on 9 August 2005, this story was retold. First came Sang Nila Utama on an illuminated float. He circled a large, granite- colored lion figure before ceding the arena to a float bearing the image of Sir Stamford Raffles, who established Singapore as a British colonial outpost in 1819, anglicizing the name Paul Rae is a British writer and theatre maker based in Singapore. He publishes on interculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and contemporary Southeast Asian performance, and is the director of the performance company spell#7 (www.spell7.net). He is allergic to cats. TDR: The Drama Review 51:1 (T193) Spring 2007. ©2007 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 119 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.1.119 by guest on 02 October 2021 in the process. Presented live to 25,000 spectators and covered extensively on local television, the parade provides an insight into the broader relationship between performance and felinity in present-day Singapore. The meaning-making processes that have accompanied infrastruc- tural development in much postcolonial nation-building have had a particular cast for the four million inhabitants of the city state, and cultural performances have played a key role in their propagation. This is because the pervasiveness of the state’s involvement in managing both the economy and the national imaginary has led to a remarkable degree of continuity between them. In August 1965, two years after joining the newly decolonized Federation of Malaysia, political and interethnic tensions led to Singapore’s forced and largely unforeseen secession. Inheriting a small, densely populated island with few natural resources, the politi- cally dominant People’s Action Party initiated policies that coupled rapid economic growth with the promotion of a jerry-built national identity. And just as the annual National Day Parade—combining military drills with mass displays on nationalistic themes—is only the most explicit manifestation of a persistently articulated ideology of martial self- determination, so the appearance in 2005 of Sang Nila Utama and his good omen exempli- fies the distribution of leonine symbols and figures throughout Singaporean cultural life. The result is a pervasive yet contested national feline imaginary, whose partial reliance on theatrical and other performances holds some instructive lessons for the broader theme of staging animals and enacting animality. Imagined Felinities In Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s tripartite distinction between “individuated,” “demon- ic,” and “State” animals, the latter are “treated in the great divine myths, in such a way as to extract from them series or structures, archetypes, or models” ([1980] 2004:265). In multi- ethnic, multifaith Singapore, the stridently secular state has worked hard to forge a series of lion-themed symbols as affective rallying points for Singaporeans, regardless of cultural or religious affiliation.1 Shortly after the 2005 National Day Parade, when a letter writer to Singapore’s sole English-language broadsheet newspaper, the Straits Times, suggested that an indigenous breed of squirrel be adopted as Singapore’s national animal, a respondent retorted with telling alacrity: I am sure Sang Nila Utama saw plenty of plantain squirrels upon his arrival. But there is a reason he chose to name our country after the lion. I am confident that the major- ity of Singaporeans would prefer a national animal that conjures an image of majesty, strength, and pride, over a jittery rodent that calls to mind cuteness and fecundity […]. It does not matter whether we have lions in our parks because if tiny Singapore’s suc- cess is anything to go by, we are all lions at heart. (Tang 2005:H6) Though leavened by a wryness rare in Singapore’s habitually po-faced public discourse, the letter nevertheless expresses a nationalistic boosterism familiar to regular readers of the Straits Times, while the somewhat precious language echoes that of state symbology. For 1. Rigid bureaucratic and discursive distinctions between ethnic groups are enforced through the broad “CMIO” classification: Chinese (75%), Malay (14%), Indian (7%), Other (4%). For many Singaporeans, the CMIO categories (a colonial legacy) obscure much more complex cultural, religious, historical, and linguistic affili- ations on the ground; although, if anything, this only strengthens the extent to which these diverse features are gathered up in an ethnically articulated identity. It is for this reason that I have continued to use the term “ethnicity” in my analysis. For a discussion of the local complexities of this issue, see the online commentar- ies by political activist Alex Au, entitled “Who is Malay?” (2005) and “Race and Ethnicity: The Singaporean Perspective” (2006). Figure 1. (previous page) The centerpiece of Singapore’s 40th National Day Parade, held at the Padang, August 2005. (Photo by Paul Rae) Paul Rae 120 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.1.119 by guest on 02 October 2021 instance, the fulsome official literature on the locally ubiquitous lion’s head logo—used by Singaporean businesses and organizations to identify themselves as such—explains that it symbolizes courage, strength, and excellence; that the five partings of its mane represent democracy, peace, progress, justice, and equality; while “its tenacious mien symbolizes resolve to face and overcome any challenges” (Singapore Infomap 2005). So far, so familiar: such archetypal identifications are universally recognizable. What is of particular interest in Singapore is how the use of feline symbols to promote national values articulating what Singaporeans should be combines with more prosaic manifestations aimed at defining what Singaporeans should do. With the republic’s cosmopolitan character forestalling appeals to a foundational racial essence, it was perhaps inevitable that a government notorious for its authoritarian instincts would instead focus its identity-forming efforts on the practices of everyday life. When then–Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew launched the “Courtesy Campaign” in 1979, it was consistent with a raft of social engineering programs aimed at everything from curbing spitting to decreasing the birthrate.2 Lee identified two components of courtesy: first, sincere intent; and second, appropriate forms, which “con- sist of words and gestures” and “help to regulate social contacts and lessen awkwardness or friction” (Lee 1979:1). Posters and television advertisements advising Singaporeans on correct behavior were fronted by Singa the Courtesy Lion, a perky bipedal cartoon character with a big Cheshire-cat grin. For over 20 years, Singa (who, although naked from the waist down, considerately headed off any potential embarrassment by lacking genitalia) instructed Singaporeans in manners, humility, civility, punctuality, and personal hygiene before being retired in 2003, when the Courtesy Campaign was subsumed into the Singapore branch of the World Kindness Movement. In short, the combination of myth-making and anthropomorphized paw-holding that characterizes the use of Singapore’s state felines underscores the ways in which Singaporean is as Singaporean does. While the overzealous application of the epithet should make one wary of precipitately crying “Performance,” in the case of Singapore, one might at the very least note that lion icons have been instrumental in promoting a processual and disciplinary mode of correct behavior and identity formation, consistent with the broader national aspiration to become, as then–Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong put it in 1999, a “high performance soci- ety” (40). However, in Singapore, not all state lions are as semiotically supine as the ever-punctilious Singa, and with the head and torso of a lion and the tail of a fish, the Merlion is a prime can- didate for some interpretive miscegenation. Apparently a mythical hybrid from the seafaring peoples who once inhabited the island’s shores, the Merlion was in fact invented in 1964 as a logo for the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board to attract, according to a spokesperson, “the curiosity of all those in foreign parts who may come across this emblem and arouse in them a desire to visit Singapore” (in Straits Times 1964:6). Such sentiments underscore the importance that outside perceptions and international esteem have always held for this inher- ently globalized port, and in 1972, an 8.6-meter statue of the Merlion, spouting an endless spume of water, was installed at the historically significant mouth of the Singapore River.3 While it has since become a popular photo opportunity for tourists and has given form to figurines, chocolates, and other kitsch ephemera, the domestic prominence of the Merlion 2. Between 1958 and 1995, Singapore’s government mounted over 200 such campaigns. In a Straits Times article entitled “Welcome to Campaign Country,” the former head of the government press department, Basskaran Cat’s Entertainment Nair, was quoted as saying, “From Family Planning to No Spitting to Planting Trees, it was really to socially reengineer people to become responsible citizens. It was to make them behave and to understand that the law will be enforced fairly and harshly if they did not comply” (in Long 2003). The 2003 SARS epidemic led to a raft of new campaigns, from “Wash Your Hands” to “Eat With Your Family” to “Step Out Singapore” and “Singapore’s OK.” 3.

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