Yahoo! News Singapore, 4 Oct 2014
Responding to a question following his speech at the National University of Singapore Society 60th Anniversary Lecture, PM Lee dismissed the film as a “self-serving personal account”. He also stated that a film was more problematic than books, as films could come across as more convincing.
“You write a book, I can write a counter book, the book you can read together with a counter book. You watch a movie, you think it’s a documentary (and) it may be like Fahrenheit 9/11 — very convincing, but it’s not a documentary. And I think we have to understand this in order to understand how to deal with these issues.” - Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, as quoted by TODAYIt’s a strange argument that I’m struggling to understand. Content can be presented in various mediums: through books, articles, films, plays, paintings, art installations, etc. People then have the option of choosing which medium they would prefer to consume.
If your objection to the content is that it is fundamentally inaccurate and damaging, how can it then be acceptable in one medium and unacceptable in another?
Perhaps the Prime Minister’s meaning is that books – especially the history books that would cover controversial periods of Singapore’s modern history – might be academic and not very accessible to everyone, while a film is much more easily consumed by a wider audience. In that case, his issue doesn’t seem to actually be about the content, but the number of people who have access to it. Full story
