Who wants to be a superhero?

Cap­tain Obvious

We’ve had Sur­vivor (1997 — yes, that old!), Big Brother (1999), Fear Fac­tor (2001), Amer­i­can Idol (2002), America’s Next Top Model (2003), Beauty and the Geek (2005 — a favourite), amongst many, many oth­ers. Granted, the format’s nowhere near new, but there are now so many “real­ity” tv shows that the mak­ers of real­ity tv shows are run­ning out of real things to make real­ity tv shows out of.

So how, like that? Run­ning out of real­ity? Turn to fan­tasy lah!

Which is exactly what “Who wants to be a super­hero?” is try­ing to do I sup­pose — get peo­ple to break out their spare span­dex, toss a lasso, spin a web, leap over tall build­ings and so on. Quite fun if you’re keen on reliv­ing pri­mary school games. One of my pri­mary school class­mates who went on to become a Chan­nel 8 actor used to lur­rrrve play­ing Won­der Woman when we played at being super­heroes dur­ing recess and between classes. It didn’t mat­ter a tiny bit to him­self that he was a fat, mostly Chinese-speaking boy with a chipped tooth. Didn’t mat­ter how much he got teased either, with taunts like “你那么 fat, invis­i­ble 飞机 how to fly？”

But with a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion, and lit­tle regard for what peo­ple think of you, some of the con­tes­tants have cre­ated super pow­ers that are quite um… inter­est­ing. Take “Hyper-strike”, who is “able to turn his own sweat into a weapon”. He’d be a hit in Sin­ga­pore. Air-conditioning would be to him what kryp­tonite is to Super­man. Noooo… Not. The. Air. Con. Must. Per­spire. Prob­a­bly also faces tough com­pe­ti­tion and turf wars with Cap­tain Stinko.

Then, there’s also “Basura”, an envi­ron­men­tally friendly super­hero who “turns trash into trea­sure and reshapes rub­bish into robots.”

If we had a sim­i­lar pro­gram in Sin­ga­pore, see­ing as we’re rather prone to adapt­ing for­mats for local con­sump­tion, what heroes would we con­jure up from our spare fab­ric lying at home?

Sick and tired of loi­ter­ing louts down­stairs of your home? Be sick and tired no more!

Behold! Void-Deck Man!

Look out for his mono­grammed jer­sey, and every time you see louts hang­ing around your void-deck, drink­ing, play­ing chess or, more likely bot­tle caps, call out for VD Man! Not to be con­fused with the fella who takes trips to Batam!

Or, behold! Cap­tain Jump-Q! Able to get you that box of donuts you’ve been han­ker­ing for in under three hours! NDP tick­ets? No prob­lem! You just have to reim­burse him for his cab fare. Don’t worry about the taxi queues either!

But really though, who do we really have? Who will save us? Who will defend us while we sleep? Not VR-Man. (James Lye is damned lucky that that show was aired almost ten years ago, before the ingter­neck became really big and every­one started upload­ing pic­tures of bad tv shows — I can’t find any pictures!).

Then who? Who? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to who? Who?

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

Behold, Cap­tain SMRT! Cap­tain who? SMRT?

That’s the best we can come up with? Cap­tain SMRT? WTF?!

How do you even pro­nounce his name? Cap­tain Smurt? Cap­tain Ass Am Arty? What kind of hero name is that?

Besides, I’m not really sure what his super­pow­ers are, and I only read in the Straits Times yes­ter­day that he goes around giv­ing out free SMRT tick­ets to peo­ple who hold on to handrails and stand on the left side while rid­ing esca­la­tors. Also, I hear that SBS bus dri­vers are won­der­ing, “Cap­tain, so what? We also bus cap­tain, you don’t see us in a mask and cape. Siao.

And there’s prob­a­bly good rea­son for Cap­tain SMRT to be masked. His mild-mannered secret iden­tity might be beaten up if he wasn’t. And does his mild man­nered secret iden­tity hold on to handrails and stand to the left while rid­ing esca­la­tors? Or would that give his game away? So many ques­tions, so lit­tle time.

Still, I’d give a lit­tle more time to guess­ing Cap­tain SMRT’s mild-mannered secret identity’s day job.

You know how tra­di­tional super­heroes (if there’s such a thing as a tra­di­tional super­hero) have secret iden­ti­ties which are mun­dane, like Peter Parker’s a pho­tog­ra­pher, Clark Kent is a junior reporter, and Bruce Wayne is a mil­lion­aire.… eh? OK, but any­way, our local hero would have a job that’s really, really, really, really mun­dane, so that being Cap­tain SMRT is a real step up.

So, I’d go for “chief bone­less­ness inspec­tor in a bone­less chicken fac­tory”, where, you know, by day, all he does is poke around to ensure the bone­less­ness of the bone­less chick­ens in the bone­less chicken factory?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Cap­tain SMRT, sin­ga­pore, SMRT, super­heroes