I watched Singapore Dreaming on YouTube. I found it a little underwhelming. I respect Colin and Yen a lot as writers, and I think \u201cPaved With Good Intentions\u201d is one of the best Singaporean essays ever written.<\/p>\n
I think I was slightly underwhelmed by Singapore Dreaming because I couldn\u2019t sympathise with the characters. All of them were a little emotionally stunted. All of them were childish and immature in their own way. What do you root for, for each character? The former Army regular turned insurance agent \u2013 CK \u2013 why should we root for him? (In The Incredibles, we see Mr. Incredible cooped up and working for an insurance company too \u2013 and we root for him because we know that he\u2019s super strong, and that his super strength ought to be put to good use. But it can\u2019t.) I\u2019m of the opinion that CK should\u2019ve been made a really good guitarist \u2013 that would have made him a more interesting, compelling character in my view. I\u2019d root for him more.<\/p>\n
(Also, CK should have organised a meetup with his friends before trying to sell them insurance. He\u2019d have better luck once they\u2019d had dinner and drinks and were in a good, cheerful mood.)<\/p>\n
A boss calling his pregnant, grieving secretary to office to photocopy things and make him coffee \u2013 that\u2019s a little too hard to believe, for me. But okay.<\/p>\n
(The boss\u2019s wife asking the visibly pregnant secretary to clean up a mess in her home is also a little ludicrous. But I suppose that\u2019s a somewhat recurring theme in the show, how people treat their help.)<\/p>\n
The gender aspects were pretty good \u2013 about the subtle(?) sexism in asian families, valuing and rewarding sons over daughters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I watched Singapore Dreaming on YouTube. I found it a little underwhelming. I respect Colin and Yen a lot as writers, and I think \u201cPaved With Good Intentions\u201d is one of the best Singaporean essays ever written. I think I was slightly underwhelmed by Singapore Dreaming because I couldn\u2019t sympathise… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[827],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-11915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-singapore"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-36b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}