‘Singapore Dreaming’ Mirrors a Society's Materialism and Rethinks Its Hopes
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Cash, car, credit card, condominium, and country club membership. These five Cs, which had been deemed the "Singaporean Dream" for decades, were the elusive objects of pursuit of family patriarch Loh Poh Huat (played by veteran actor Richard Low) in the 2006 film "Singapore Dreaming."
Directed and written by Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo, "Singapore Dreaming" follows the dismal realities of Huat, his wife Siew Luan (Alice Lim), daughter Mei (Yann Yann Yeo) and her husband CK (Yu Beng Lim), and son Seng (Asher Su) and his fiancée Irene (Serene Chen).
It garnered a slew of awards and nominations upon its release, including the Montblanc Screenwriters Award at the 54th San Sebastian International Film Festival, Best Asian Film Award at the 20th Tokyo International Film Festival, Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the 30th Asian-American International Film Festival, and Best Screenplay at the Inaugural Asian Film Archive Young Jury Awards.
The film opens with irony. Huat relaxes on a lounge chair poolside, smoking a cigarette and lapping up the sun. His leisure is interrupted by a phone call from a debt collector, and it is revealed that he owes a lot of people money, much of which was used to send his son Seng to study in the United States.
He admonishes the caller for disturbing him and heads off to work. As a lawyer’s clerk, he is directly involved in repossessing the properties of people who have been unable to pay their debts. Despite being in the same position, however, his brashness is exhibited when he cruelly delivers a court order to an old woman and seizes her house's furniture because her son had defaulted on his debt payments.
Huat's aspirations for status and wealth reflect his own discontent with life; he looks down on people who live in public housing, calling them lacking in social graces, even though he resides in one. He also belittles Mei, who works as a secretary, and CK, who left the army to sell insurance, as well as his wife Siew Luan for her inability to speak and understand English. Seng seemed to be the lone person who could do no wrong in his father’s eyes, even though he had been enabled his whole life despite his constant failures.
The fate of the Loh family seems to take a turn for the better when Huat finally wins the lottery. He bags a sweet S$2 million, and for a moment the amount almost appeared like it could solve most of their problems. The money elevates them enough that their dreams for the five Cs looked just within reach.
The concept of "losing face" is not just an all-too-familiar reality for Singaporeans but for most Asians, and this seeps into the way Huat interfaces with the world and the people around him. It looms over the family, each affecting them except for Siew Luan and Irene, who both fit the mould of women who disappear behind the shadow of domesticity, whose very existence are eclipsed by their male partners. It manifests in the expectant Mei, who yearns to give her future child a lavish lifestyle that she never had. She visits condominium showrooms despite not having the means to afford one and ends up henpecking CK for his inability to provide. It also weighs heavy on Seng; pressured to gain the respect of his family, he lies about finishing a degree in IT in the United States, squandering the education that was funded by his father and Irene.
Materialism and Keeping Up Appearances in a Capitalist, Competitive Singapore
In a job interview, Seng is rejected after claiming that he graduated from a certain Dubois Polytechnical University in Idaho and not from a prestigious institution like Stanford University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Due to his failure to secure a job, he convinces his father to lend him money to start his own IT consulting business. He asks to borrow S$50,000, but Huat is unimpressed: "What can you do with 50,000? If you want to do business, you got to do it big! Don't do small-time business. You'll only make me lose face." He is also given a credit card by Huat, which he uses to buy a sports car.
Admonished for his luxury purchase despite being jobless, Seng tells Irene, “Nowadays, people look at what car you drive, what house you live in, what university you go to! If you want to make it, you've got to look like you've already made it.”
The notion of keeping up appearances and looking the part rules over them palpably and unconsciously and it is this same notion that makes Huat’s death comical. Out of excitement for his country club membership interview, Huat dons a suit only to be teased by Siew Luan for wearing one under such hot weather. He arrives early at the country club and it’s apparent that despite his new wealth, he still looked like a fish out of water. He wanders around the club, only to suffer a sudden heart attack.
It's a notion that’s inescapable even in death. It translates to Huat’s extravagant Taoist funeral, complete with a grand three-storey joss paper bungalow to accompany him in the afterlife. The solemnity of the scene is punctuated by the trivial and it’s impossible not to laugh when Seng asks the paper house maker if he has a condominium version because his father had always wanted to live in one. The maker convinces him that a bungalow is still better than a condo and says he would throw in a paper swimming pool aside from the paper Mercedes car, laptop, VCR, maid, security, chauffeur, and all the works.
The honesty of “Singapore Dreaming” means that it is hard to detest its characters fully in spite of all their frailties. The characters’ complexities compel one to tread with nuance, with understanding if not compassion; their inner battles hold a looking glass to a people aware of its culture’s own glorification of materialism and its bottomless, empty pursuit, but also at once participants thereof.
And it's an experience near and dear to its creators, Colin and Yen Yen. The husband and wife shared in an interview with SMA News in September 2006 that they were prompted to make the film when they published an article for the Singapore International Foundation's 10th anniversary book. In their essay, the couple wrote about the "Singapore Dream" and how it had transformed into a "Singapore Plan" for them or "how you needed to go to specific schools, get specific degrees, join specific companies, and so on."
What the couple didn't expect, though, was the hail of email responses they received from Singaporeans about the essay, many of whom echoed the same sentiments and dealt with the same dilemmas.
"[We] felt that we had a responsibility to share them with others as well," the couple said. "We grappled with how to do this for a couple of years before deciding to use parts of the stories – plus some of our own experiences – to craft the characters in 'Singapore Dreaming.'"
Sixth C
In Huat's will, which was created before the birth of Seng and Mei, it stated that he would leave everything to Siew Luan upon his death. After settling her husband's debts, Siew Luan was left with S$1.2 million, S$300,000 of which she gave to Mei so she could start anew after being disregarded for most of her life. Seng, on the other hand, receives only a thousand dollars from his mother.
The film ends on a bittersweet and hopeful note in Siew Luan and Irene's deliverance, with both women finally taking the reins of their lives. Siew Luan decides to return to her hometown in Malaysia and gives some money to Huat's mistress and young son as an act of benevolence. Irene, on the other hand, finally musters the strength to leave Seng and pursue a degree in photography in the US.
"Singapore Dreaming" was released in 2006 and conceived around the early aughts, during a time when Singaporeans like Colin, Yen Yen, and many others, were rethinking what the Singapore Dream meant for them. Although it may be one's fault to give in to peer pressure, the couple said then that "it is really hard to be an individual [in Singapore] when there are so few people we have as role models who have charted alternative paths."
Today, though, one could say that the five Cs no longer hold as much water in the aspirations of Singaporeans, especially among the youth. Dr. Paulin Tay Straughan, professor of sociology and Dean of Students at Singapore Management University, said in a Business Times article on July 1, 2022, that most of the five Cs can be archived because the youth "are dreaming a lot bigger than that." Lee Yat Bun, president of the National University of Singapore Students' Union (NUSSU), also said in the report that the general direction of the youth appears to be that "they dream of things that would allow them to better express themselves and be more in line with their personal beliefs and values."
"Singapore Dreaming" proves itself a timeless cultural artefact. More than a poignant mirror to a people's material aspirations, it's a compassionate reminder of the possibilities that can come from reimagining one's hopes and dreams on one's own terms. It probes one to ask, what constitutes a meaningful life?
In Huat's funeral, Mei, Seng, and Irene play mahjong with Uncle Peng, which allows them to wistfully recall the times they had with their father. A fishing trip on Pulau Ubin, a football match at the National Stadium, the childhood joy of cold drinks, melon seeds, and prawn crackers.
“Have you heard of the sixth C? It stands for coffin," Uncle Peng tells them. "We all die in the end anyway."
Watch “Singapore Dreaming” on Netflix.
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