Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Goodness, I think the new trailer for Singapore Idol is quite dreadful. You know, the one where the 12 finalists appear one by one and morph into one another. The concept is awfully familiar, and I'm sure I've seen it somewhere but I just cannot remember. Anyone knows? Coming back to my utter disgust at the advert, I really cannot say why I feel this way. But I think it's all too fake and artificial. It sends goosebumps all over my skin. And I don't mean in a good way.
I don't know if it's just my conservative Asian tendencies, but it just makes me feel strange seeing Singaporeans like you and me become like publicity vehicles on Singapore Idol. It's just way too strange for me, in a way I have no idea how to describe at all. So I should stop screaming about it anyway.
I'm still working on the storyline for my next Case Study story. After a while it turns out my stories are always about self-hating people who are feeling guilty at being wretched people. Anyway what inspired me to start writing stories like these was Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, which is a wickedly good book. Anyway the theme is ugly people, i.e. people who behave in an ugly fashion. It's really fascinating for me because I think it's a facet that's present in all of us and so it's fun to explore the subject. And for those of you who feel you can relate to some of the emotions I describe, all the better, because you'll feel more strongly for the stories if you can relate to the characters.
I know it's really quite cynical of me to describe people as having their own secret motives for doing things, and are basically self-serving creatures, but I think it's all too true of many people, myself included. I don't know if I am trying to serve my own purposes in writing these stories, while falsely proclaiming, "Let's look in the mirror and see our ugliness for what it is" and rubbish like that, which is ironic. Can I get away with it by saying I'm having more fun doing this than I've had in a long time? Heh.
Americans are a weird bunch of people. I mean, you have dumb ignorant Americans who can't see past their country's borders, and who don't know what vertigo is, nor what a scarab looks like, or think that the Phillipines is an island (all this from TAR 5), and generally Americans who make you think the country is a whole pile of crap that loves itself too much to notice that other people can't wait to run away from it. But then you have Americans that completely turn your head around and think, Wow these people are good. Superb authors like David Foster Wallace (a genius, and that's no exaggeration), Neil Gaiman, Janny Wurts, and I think you can come up with a substantial list too. And it's really amazing, because reading these authors' works you can not imagine that they are from the same nation as those people who are so myopic they can't see past their conjunctiva.
Which constantly reminds me not to stereotype large groups of people based on the irritating traits of a few members of that group that I see, because assuming that people are going to be stupid and irritating and smug even before you know them is unfair to them, and it makes me no more different from the self-loving myopic Americans that I can't stand. It's too easy to judge a person based on all these non-reliable factors that give no honest indication of the truth, and yet humans, being humans, are all too prone to judge quickly, almost as if the people around them are not worth their time trying to get to know better. Which is a sad fact, that we simply cannot afford the effort of getting to know every person inside out. The stress would kill us, if anything.
Avaris / 9/29/2004 09:57:00 PM
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