About Hossan Leong Show’s “censorship”

On September 7, 2010 · 17 Comments · In Laws of our land

I was hor­ri­fied at first when I heard that the MDA had issues with the script that was writ­ten for the Hos­san Leong Show (Sep 23 — Oct 9), then indig­nant when I found out fur­ther that some­one had taken offense and com­plained about the words, “Halal Veg­e­tar­ian Babi Pongteh”, which was a dish to be con­cocted by “Bibik Lim”, a recur­ring char­ac­ter in the show.

The offend­ing words were also in the pub­lic­ity mate­r­ial dis­trib­uted around the island.

This is how things unfolded: Last year, at the end of “Bibik Lim“‘s skit, she (Bibik Lim) decided to tell the audi­ence about the next dish she was about to pre­pare: some­thing that was all-inclusive, all-embracing — and came up with the name which was sub­se­quently used as part of pub­lic­ity mate­r­ial for this year’s show, which was printed some time in April this year.

The name of the dish was com­pletely ad-libbed (by Hos­san Leong), and off the cuff. It was, as you can imag­ine, never meant to offend.

On the con­trary, the cre­ative team behind the show have always struck for a story arc of sorts that told of our country’s multi-culturalism and its atten­dant dif­fi­cul­ties. It is obvi­ously very ironic that in try­ing to do so, we’ve stuffed up and offended someone’s reli­gious and racial sensitivities.

I know what they say about the road to hell, but there is no excuse for me not spot­ting the fact that the sim­ple jux­ta­po­si­tion of the two words “halal” and “babi” would have been likely to cause offense.

I there­fore apol­o­gize unre­servedly to the gen­tle­man who spot­ted the offend­ing copy on the flier, who was upset enough to write to the local Malay-language paper. The pro­duc­tion com­pany has, on the direc­tion of the MDA, recalled every poster and flier from every dis­tri­b­u­tion point in Singapore.

This is, how­ever, a chance for a sen­si­ble talk­ing point, and I have always been an advo­cate for more dis­cus­sion about our country’s racial/religious diver­sity, with the view that the more we talk, the more we’ll under­stand. This is sadly and dan­ger­ously lack­ing — as is attested by an exchange between stu­dents at SMU ear­lier this year.

In the mean­time, the MDA has also asked that we revise the offend­ing por­tion of the show itself. While we are loathe to do so — because it is com­edy vari­ety show, and in com­edy vari­ety shows, there will be some peo­ple who will be offended — we have agreed to their request because, amongst other things, the team behind “Bibik Lim” had spent weeks crack­ing their brains try­ing unsuc­cess­fully to work out how to make ‘halal veg­e­tar­ian babi pongteh’ anyway.

You could say that as a result of this deba­cle, “Bibik Lim” is cur­rently exper­i­ment­ing with a few new racially inclu­sive, new migrant embrac­ing dishes with a Per­anakan twist. No, Assam Ox-Tongue Wrapped in Beef Cheek is not one of them. But I encour­age every­one to give Bibik Lim’s dishes a shot — come and watch her on the Hos­san Leong Show (23 Sep­tem­ber — 9 Octo­ber, Drama Cen­tre The­atre).

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  • Robdavid1

    So sad Sin­ga­pore, that one man with no sense of humour has such power — once more reli­gion poi­sons every­thing… the sad thing is all over the world peo­ple with extreme reli­gious views are stop­ping car­toon­ists, satirists & film mak­ers from express­ing their views… we live in such con­ser­v­a­tive times… its about time we cen­sor those who have no sense of humour!

  • BryanT

    Let me just make three points:

    1. Just because Hosan ad-libbed it and “never meant to offend” does not mean that it will NOT offend cer­tain groups. Once those who unthink­ing ad-libbed such things realise the sit­u­a­tion, they should just humbly apol­o­gise for the insen­si­tiv­ity and then STFU, which is NOT what you are doing.

    2. You said that that you are “an advo­cate for more dis­cus­sion about our country’s racial/religious diver­sity”. Then I advo­cate that you write about what you think some­thing about our racial/religious diver­sity so we can have a decent dis­cus­sion over your views. What we per­ceive here is sim­ply a case of you grum­bling over the fact that your insen­si­tive traipse into cre­ativ­ity has war­ranted a less-than-graceful reminder. Pull the other one!

    3. Per­haps it is true that “in com­edy vari­ety shows, there will be some peo­ple who will be offended”. But the onus is on the writer to be aware of who might be offended by his out­put. Say­ing that some might be offended is just a lame excuse for flash­ing the “artis­tic” license.

  • http://www.miyagi.sg Mr Miyagi

    Sorry if I wasn’t clear — I am apol­o­giz­ing for the offense caused by the fliers, not for the show’s content.

  • Scott

    Hi Bryant, I am very offended by you and see­ing you type those words. Just because you didn’t mean to offend, does not mean you did not offend. And now that you did. I demand an apol­ogy from you. I am specif­i­cally offended by your use of num­ber points instead of bul­let points.

    And you mean to say, “what you per­ceive here” and not “what we per­ceive here”. Please don’t speak for all of us.

    Kthxbye.

  • Desmond

    Yup, reli­gion really poi­sions every­thing. As Steven Wein­berg said “With or with­out [reli­gion] you’d have good peo­ple doing good things and evil peo­ple doing evil things. But for good peo­ple to do evil things, it takes religion.”

  • Hur­ri­cane Jane 03

    Robdavid1 — if peo­ple makes fun of you, or your loved ones, you won’t be happy either. Let’s say I say some­thing about ur child’s name sound­ing like crap, or what­ever it is that u hold close to ur heart, you wont be pleased too.

    Being “artis­tic” does not mean that you can make any jokes any­how. Being really cre­ative means you can make peo­ple laugh with­out resort­ing to cheap tricks like this.

    Just because it’s the in thing to mock reli­gions now doesn’t mean you gotta do it too. I’ve always respected Hos­san LEong as an artist — he was .. IS .. really funny, and I also enjoy your writ­ings, miyagi, but when you cross the line and give a reserved apol­ogy, sorry for this but not for that .. it just leaves a totally sour note. I have expected more from you guys.

  • Alan Wong

    If we can’t have babi, then can we have itek instead of babi ?

    By the way veg­e­tar­ian duck is quite pop­u­lar with veg­e­tar­i­ans, u know ?

  • Robdavid1

    Hur­ri­cane Jane 03 I am not mock­ing reli­gion — I’m tired… really tired of reli­gious peo­ple dic­tat­ing what can and can’t be done… who we can love, what we can eat and how to dress (this belongs with my grandfather’s gen­er­a­tion). If I get upset with some­thing — like I am with reli­gious peo­ple with no sense of humour telling the rest of us what is and isn’t allowed as com­edy — it is because I choose to be upset… like for­give­ness and hap­pi­ness being upset is a deci­sion… I think it’s time the con­ser­v­a­tives choose to laugh rather than force their views on rest of us.

  • Drew

    Per­son­ally, I think it’d be the height of genius if some­one made comedy/satire which even the tar­get could laugh at. There was a Roman ser­vant boy, Pietro Aretino, who made fun of the Pope by writ­ing a poem about his affec­tion for a pet ele­phant (i.e. the Vat­i­can). Instead of being excom­mu­ni­cated, his poem cemented his rep­u­ta­tion as an author.

    Mean­ing no offence what­so­ever, halal jokes are a lit­tle too… easy. Couldn’t you think of some­thing with more substance?

  • Renem

    Hmmm how oddly abra­sive things have become post 9–11
    For years UK come­di­ans have trot­ted out the ‘kosher bacon sand­wich’ joke — sigh

  • Drew

    you can’t seri­ously be com­par­ing sg to the UK, can you? you don’t have peo­ple ran­domly yelling, “bloody paki/chink” at you in sg.

  • Anthea

    So I guess the John Stew­art show would be banned in Sin­ga­pore? His show com­ments on top­i­cal events, and noth­ing, cer­tainly not reli­gion, is sacred, but it is all in good taste. But half the pop­u­la­tion would prob­a­bly not be able to appre­ci­ate the satire, or under­stand the par­ody, and would in all like­li­hood take offense at every word that is uttered.

    And please can stop tot­ting out the “how would you feel if your fam­ily is made fun of”? This has no rel­e­vance here. I see noth­ing wrong with “Halal Veg­e­tar­ian Babi Pongteh”. If it were really offen­sive, why do you see “halal beef bacon” on sale in Malaysia, or even “halal turkey ham”? The per­son who com­plained needs to travel more.

  • Anthea

    Hur­ri­cane Jane,

    If the term Halal Veg­e­tar­ian Babi Pongteh“is really offen­sive, why then does one see “halal beef bacon” on sale in Malaysia, or even “halal turkey ham”? Some­times, we can be over­sen­si­tive, and let’s not use the tired old line “if peo­ple makes fun of you, or your loved ones, you won’t be happy either”. If it were the case, let us not com­ment on any­thing, because some­thing is always sacred to some­one else. Or is the lib­erty to take offence only lim­ited to peo­ple of the dom­i­nant faiths or groups?

    The main deter­mi­nant should be the absence of mal­ice. And cer­tainly, Hos­san does not por­tray any mal­ice in his choice of words. In all real­ity, I would like to know exactly how the phrase he used offended the per­son who com­plained. Can some­one explain please? (I hang my head in shame in not being able to speak or under­stand our national language.)

    Sorry for the almost dou­ble post — a vari­a­tion of the above response has also been posted way, way below.

  • th_3

    my flier still says “Veg­e­tar­ian Halal, Babi Pongteh” ! am going to keep the flier. :P

    any­way, i thought most sin­ga­pore­ans are quite open and have a sense of humour? i guess i was wrong; there are still peo­ple out there who still find offence in small things. :/

  • Alley­oops

    Tuan2, Puan2, con­sider that the mam­mal babi hutan is not babi (haram itself); but (babi hutan) is a game meat that can­not be boar­ing for pub­lic (gam­ing) use, deh? ;-)

  • Anony­mous

    Ummm…what is the point of this?

  • http://carpetgeeks.com Nat­ural Area Rugs

    Hmmm…This gives me a lot of good ideas…if they work out, I’ll come back and share! Thanks again!

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