It's a remarkably strident letter. How many of us, I wonder, would like to see his wishes granted and live in a world that he envisages?

17 Oct 2006
The Straits Times Online Forum

All the movies are about sex and violence. Time for censors to act

I turned to the cinema pages of the Life! Section in the Straits Times last Saturday and noted the sort of movies being shown in town.

The main themes focussed on violence, crime, death and sex. Here are some of the movies

• The Black Dahlia - about Hollywood's most infamous sex murders;
• Dead man's shoes - about revenge;
• Silk - about spirits;
• Death Note - about death;
• The Departed - a crime drama;
• Wet hot sake - about sex, sleaze and sensuality;
• My Summer of Love - more sex and sleaze.

The other movies are about inconsequential events. These are time-wasters and sad to watch

• Talladega Nights - about brainless and crazy people with fast cars;
• World Trade Centre - a disaster;
• Rob -B-Hood - no theme.

These movies do not provide any wholesome and meaningful lessons in life. The more a person watches them, the more he would be made to feel that life is hopeless and meaningless.

Movie directors are happily ripping off the public by giving us worthless movies that harm us. It is useless to bar only children and those below 18 from watching these movies as the tasteless pictures in the media continue to defile good sense and morals.

Where are our educators? Why are they silent on this sad state of affairs? What does our conscience tell us about such movies being screened in public? Do we have a conscience at all?

One may argue that we have a choice not to watch these shows. But if it Hobson's choice everyday with such low quality movies, where is the freedom for one to choose a wholesome and good movie when none is available?

What about the public's right to see good movies? And why do we create for ourselves a famine of morally enriching shows?

A movie that is worthwhile watching would give hope to the viewer about the meaning of life and its purpose.

A good movie should result in stirring a person's mind and heart to do good for society. It should focus on wholesome family values of love and care, and respect for the elders and the government.

How should we rate a movie for its value? We should not give ratings to reflect its popularity based on violence, crime and sex, but instead focus on good values such as kindness, gentleness, love, peace, goodness, faithfulness, self-control and joy.

Unfortunately, none of these good values can be found in the movies mentioned above.

Movies that espouse the desirable values are rare. These are 'Chariots of Fire' and 'Akeelah and the Bee'. I particularly enjoy watching Jack Neo's portrayal of our primary school system in 'I not stupid'.

Yet if it remains only a portrayal of our country's meritocratic education system, it alone would not be able to help us make further progress.

It is not enough just to point out society's ills. The movie's director should have concluded the show with lessons on corrective measures for the public.

I would like the Board of Film Censors to critically review and evaluate the quality of the movies currently being screened in public.

The guiding principle of the authority should always be driven by good and responsible values that promote hope, compassion and love.

And it should not be influenced by the public's lust for sex, violence and death that leads to a sense of hopelessness for the viewer.

George Lim Heng Chye

Lim is what is known in psychology as authoritarian-minded. He demands respect for rank and for codes of behaviour laid down from on high. He hankers for a time when the world is orderly and obedient, and good reigns over evil, "good" of course being defined by people like him. In his letter he spelt it out clearly:  "A good movie ....should focus on... respect for the elders and the government."

He is also anti-modern, because his extreme views clash with the fact that the modern world is rather anti-authoritarian. The features of the modern world -- wave after wave of inventions and ideas, the ideal of egalitarianism, the yearning for mobility and personal autonomy -- come out of revolt against authoritarian control and an effort to escape the limitations of the existing, be they technological, social or political.

Now, people such as Lim will deny that they are anti-modern. They're all for technology and material improvement, they'd say, but they conveniently forget that none of that would have come about without people seeking to change things. But what motivates inventors to create new things? What motivates businessmen to create wealth that lead to a materially better-off world?

Very often, it's the market, and prominent in the market is a mass desire for pleasure and entertainment. These are powerful drivers for creativity. We would not have cinema, manga, mobile telephony, cameras, television, music videos or the internet without such self-gratifying desires abroad in the market. Yet pleasure and entertainment in the minds of religiously-minded authoritarians are illegitimate motivations, because they are seen as selfish and ungodly.

On the one hand we can counter that there would be no "wholesome" films without a few hundred more flicks (including porn) that are pure entertainment to make money with, but that would be falling into the trap of accepting Lim's definition of "wholesome". His is a very skewed definition.

(Note how he classified the movie World Trade Center – a story based on the al Qaeda destruction of the twin towers in New York City as an "inconsequential event".)

On the other hand, many movies that he may dislike also promote thought and values -- though perhaps not the sort that Lim wants. In any case, I don't accept that pure frivolous entertainment is necessarily a bad and dispensable thing. I would have thought that happiness is a very important social boon too.

The censorship that Lim calls for will not produce more of his kind of "wholesome" material. By denying producers from giving what people want and are prepared to pay for, censorship will merely kill the industry. It is not progressive, but regressive.

The Taliban forced Afghan women to cover themselves up with burqas. There were not even slits for eyes, but gauze. It represented a total eradication of female individuality and autonomy - AP.

Lim's ideas are exactly the same as those of the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, taking that country back to the dark ages. Music and dancing were banned, films were banned, women were covered up from head to toe and forbidden to come out of their homes unless accompanied by male relatives. Women were not permitted to work and schooling for girls was abolished, because according to them, God dictated that females should serve, not usurp males. Good must reign over evil.

George Lim's God may dictate other things, but his self-righteous stridency is the same.

* * * * *

How was his name familiar to me? From a letter that the Straits Times published on 15 July 2003 [1].

That letter opens with a tremendous bombast: "I am a heterosexual man, married to a heterosexual woman and we have four heterosexual children. We believe that the right upbringing by parents will prevent improper and deviant future behaviours."

"We also believe in a God who loves both the heterosexual and the gay, but He hates the sin of immorality."

He objected to the civil service employing gay people. "[Is] there no more right or wrong regarding the hiring of gays to help govern the country?"

In case people thought that being practical was a virtue, he wrote, "There is no greyness between white and black. White is white, and black is black. There is no relativity in morality. Morality is absolute."

Taliban!

Every time sometime raises the question of why the government continues to criminalise and discriminate against gay citizens, e.g. through heavy censorship and bans, the government kowtows to people such as George Lim.