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10 The Kids Are Not All Right The Curious Case of Sapphic Censorship in City-State Singapore Loretta Chen The recent banning of Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right starring Julianna Moore, Annette Benning and Mark Ruffalo sparked off a furore in the Singapore Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) community.1 The most talked-about movie at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and the winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival, the movie combines comedic surprise with scenes of poignant, raw emotion of a richly drawn portrait of a modern, urban lesbian family. Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are married and share a cosy suburban Southern California home with their teenage children, Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson). Both ‘mums’ have raised their children well. Mum Nic clearly wears the pants and is the sole breadwinner of the household. Mum Jules bore the children after having been artificially inseminated by an unknown sperm donor. However, as Joni prepares to leave for college, her 15-year-old brother, Laser, presses her for a big favour and enlists Joni’s help to find their biological father, which of course sets the engine of the movie’s narrative in full motion. Members of the LGBT community and movie-goers alike were hugely anticipating the screening of the film at the Love and Pride Film Festival in one of Singapore’s most popular movie theatres, Golden Village Grand on 7 November 2010 when the Media Development Authority (MDA) released a statement to unequivocally state the banning of the film, citing reasons “due to unforeseen circumstances”. With no mention to specifics, this “rationale” given by the MDA is merely a politically correct, vague and imprecise way of indicating that the Film Festival has flouted the “guidelines which disallow the promotion, justification and glamorization of lesbian lifestyles and their explicit depictions” (MDA, 2006). Having watched the movie myself, I can only postulate that the only reason the film was banned, aside from the fact it is set in a lesbian household which the MDA is already privy to, is the fact that the film portrays lesbianism in a healthy, acceptable, normal light thereby risking a “glamorization” of an alternative lifestyle. It is possible to argue that the only depictions of lesbians and gays in 176 Loretta Chen Singapore that are sanctioned and tolerated, albeit with copious cuts and advisories , are if the portrayals of the LGBT community are unsavoury and contentious, thereby reifying the need for government scrutiny and public surveillance. The Kids Meet Silly Child: Yet Another Instance of Sapphic Censorship This controversial ban bears semblance to yet another incident. The last media episode that ignited much (on-line) dissent amongst the Singaporean lesbian community was over an ironically named Silly Child music video. Starhub Cable Vision (SCV) was fined by the Media Development Authority (MDA) for airing the music video by singer Olivia Yan on the MTV Mandarin Channel on 26 and 27 November 2007. In MDA’s press statement, the music video was said to “portray romanticised scenes of two girls kissing” and highlighted that such behaviour was “unacceptable”. This representation was “in breach of TV advertising guidelines which disallow advertisements that condone homosexuality ” (The Straits Times, 2008). The MDA had apparently consulted the Advisory Committee for Chinese Programmes which concurred that the commercial had promoted lesbianism as a romantic and acceptable lifestyle. The lyrics of Yan’s song apparently further amplified this interpretation. Taking into account the severity of the breach, as well as the fact that the commercial was aired on a youth-oriented channel, the MDA found that a financial penalty was warranted and fined SCV S$10,000. However, this writer argues that contrary to the MDA’s simplistic reading, the music video actually rejects or is at best, ambivalent towards lesbianism as opposed to espousing the practice. What the video does do is to effectively foreground the tensions between sexuality, Chinese-ness and the queer lesbian body. In fact, there is a discernible narrative that charts this ambivalence or rejection of lesbianism which has been overlooked by the authorities. The voice-over that precedes the song states, “This summer, I finally learnt what love as sung in love songs is all about.” The video is seen through the eyes of Olivia, the singer, a fledgling undergraduate singer on the brink of a creative break who reminisces about a summer fling. During...

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