Feel suffocated?
Feel frustrated?
Feel alone?
You are not alone in feeling frustrated and suffocated when the bill on changes to the film act expectedly became law. Regulation via feigned liberalisation is the PAP’s hidden Newspeak when it talks about control of the PAPolitical discourse. The government promised to allow political films but in the process threw in more regulation on political messages especially intended for dissemination in the internet. This political discourse is no longer dominated by the subjugated media, it is now contested by the very audience it is supposed to brainwash. Since the convenience of uploading video content, the public have made up their own stories about PAP rule with not only words, but pictures and videos as well. Hence, the internet and handphone cameras are the latest basic screwdrivers to loosen parts in the PAP’s propaganda machine.
The 2006 general election showed the potential of handphone cameras and Youtube. People were uploading election rally videos left right and centre despite the government’s hastily imposed ban on recorded speeches as political videos. That is the first of the PAP’s paranoia about technology that undermines their rule. The other reason for the PAP’s fear of the dramatised political video is Martyn See. The original local par excellence video activist who was able to jolt Singaporeans back into reality and expose the PAP’s twofaced doublespeak propaganda with Singapore Rebel and Speakers Cornered. Before The Online Citizen, the Wayang Party, there was Chee Soon Juan, who was way ahead of his time in using the internet and its video potential to enlighten Singaporeans. Martyn See had this to say about the new regressive law “It shows off a government that is incapable of trusting its own citizens to watch political films“. I think it rather shows that the government only wants the citizens to watch only its political films in the form of “documentaries” on CNA, which is exempt from the Films Act’s restrictions on political messages.
The ban on political films came into effect in 1998 as Section 33 of the Films Act, two years after SDP applied and probably failed to get a licence to sell a videotape about the party. Eleven years later, the “Chee Soon Juan law” has evolved into a bigger net and the police has even more legal grounds to detain or arrest citizens. The 1981 Films Act is gradually being amended with catch-all phrasing to not only focus on political parties and their supporters, but also on the average person on the street who is able to whip out his or her handphone to record for posterity non-PAP political events. The more technology progresses to allow citizens to become active in contesting government propaganda, the tighter laws like the Films Act would become. This is only the tip of the PAP juggernaut coming.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=25103.1
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