In IP1 / Sec 3 / Year 9 (I feel bad just saying Year 9 - it makes me feel like I'm forgetting Singapore), we had to take an elective class. Ruthlessly, we were given a set number of 'points', and were given free reign to 'bid' on our electives, having to take into account our desire, demand, and supply. To this day, I can't decide whether this was smart or cruel of our teachers. Anyway, I ended up with the elective I wanted, "MTV". Unfortunately, I discovered that the elective was not about MTV per se, but about the evils of American / Western media, using "MTV" as a synecdoche.
Our teacher was very weird. I'm still traumatised by how he referred to us, in his emails, as "MTV YoungStarZ". I wish I was making this up. But, if you've read my first post on here, you'll know that 11-year-old Sa and Mr "call me Keith" Lee would have gotten on like a house on fire. But not fifteen-year-old Sa. I really didn't mind him, actually. It was just that the elective was this weird tension between Mr Lee embodying American media ideals ("call me Keith"), and espousing its corrosive effects on the fabric of society. And on teeth, too - I remember him telling us that when he was our age he would drink eight cans of coke a day. But I digress.
Our assessment at the end of the term was to create some sort of video presentation on the effects of MTV. Me being the good student that I was, I reflected this message wholeheartedly and transparently in my half-video, half-slideshow, using my five-year-old brother as the main character. The result was a weird half-hearted half-propaganda thing - incidentally, paralleling my mother's scripts for Channel 5's Life Stories: a TV show about the half-legendary Singaporeans in history who embodied the nation's ideals, like Elizabeth Choi and the swimmer and the leper (I forget their names).
Without further ado, here is the adorable atrocity:
PS: I was so taken by the mugshot of the prisoner that I ended up, later, writing a poem about him. But that's another post.
Our teacher was very weird. I'm still traumatised by how he referred to us, in his emails, as "MTV YoungStarZ". I wish I was making this up. But, if you've read my first post on here, you'll know that 11-year-old Sa and Mr "call me Keith" Lee would have gotten on like a house on fire. But not fifteen-year-old Sa. I really didn't mind him, actually. It was just that the elective was this weird tension between Mr Lee embodying American media ideals ("call me Keith"), and espousing its corrosive effects on the fabric of society. And on teeth, too - I remember him telling us that when he was our age he would drink eight cans of coke a day. But I digress.
Our assessment at the end of the term was to create some sort of video presentation on the effects of MTV. Me being the good student that I was, I reflected this message wholeheartedly and transparently in my half-video, half-slideshow, using my five-year-old brother as the main character. The result was a weird half-hearted half-propaganda thing - incidentally, paralleling my mother's scripts for Channel 5's Life Stories: a TV show about the half-legendary Singaporeans in history who embodied the nation's ideals, like Elizabeth Choi and the swimmer and the leper (I forget their names).
Without further ado, here is the adorable atrocity:
PS: I was so taken by the mugshot of the prisoner that I ended up, later, writing a poem about him. But that's another post.
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