On "Home"

They appear like apparitions, dark silhouettes waiting to take shape by the "river that gives us life". The light shimmers but we cannot quite make out gender, race or individual identity. But some things are clear – they are children, young and energetic, and they are Singaporean. Welcome to the latest installment in the Great Singaporean Music Video.

When Dick Lee's homage to being Singaporean, Home, made its debut as a National Day song in 1998, people noted its honesty. It wasn't filled with the jingoistic injunctions ("Stand up, stand up for Singapore!), insecure declarations ("We're going to show the world what Singapore can be"), repetitive and flawed logic ("This is my family, these are my friends/ We are Singapore, Singaporeans") or the bare-faced lies ("Every creed and every race, has its role and has its place/ One people, one nation, one Singapore!") that had characterised previous attempts at the Singapore Song. In fact, it seemed to blend the intensely personal experience of finding one's place in Singapore and being rooted to the Singaporean landscape in a sincere and unobstrusive manner. No one was telling you that you were Singaporean or what you had to do to be one. Instead, there was a recognition that each individual's everyday experiences – knowing every "street and shore" and "winding through my Singapore" – were enough to authenticate one's sense of belonging to the country. This was certainly a Singapore Song with a difference. The fact that Kit Chan – a recording artiste that had made good internationally – sang it, seemed to underscore the fact that at last, here was a Singapore Song that was more than a mere collation of slogans. Finally, Singaporeans thought they had a Song that didn't need to be coerced from the vocal chords of thousands of school children, but one that could be enjoyed and taken seriously, precisely because it didn't take the task of Nation Building too seriously.

So what happens when there hasn't been a memorable Singapore Song in several years? The National Day theme songs in 2002 (We will get there) and 2003 (A place in my heart), were frankly, forgettable. The last decent attempt was Tanya Chua's 2001 composition, Where I Belong. In 2004, the Ministry of Propaganda (also known as the Ministry for Information and the Arts) has decided to take a hint from these dismal failures and forgo commissioning a song this year. But every true-blue Singaporean needs his daily shot of patriotic feeling, especially right around the end of July. The solution? Re-package the most popular Singapore Song in recent history as a feel-good music video. But as with every re-fashioning of art, and especially when the goals are explicitly ideological, much is sacrificed.

"20 Locations"

This is a music video about space. It seems appropriate, given song lyrics which emphasise the location of memory and the feeling of belonging in the tangible personal experience of specific spaces. But while the lyrics appreciate the particular experience of space, the images in the music video exteriorise space, turning it into a bland background of reductive symbols. Primarily, there are the images of water (the Singapore River, reservoirs, a coastal location), sky (poetically bleached from blue to white) and grass, lots of grass. Buildings when they exist, are either idealised fragments (an early shot of the columns at the Supreme Courts, the skyline of the central business district), empty (an interior of an exhibition hall) or too far in the background to be significant (a very distant long shot of HDB flats). Even as the children who are featured in the video go about experiencing Singapore's sights, they are shuttled through unseen streets and rivers in open air buses and boats, the over-arching sky and buildings devoid of life always streaming by in the background. The experience of Singapore's spaces is detached, touristy.

"63 kids"

The stars of this music video are children, school children from several local school choirs. They wear the same clothes, a white traditional-looking top and black trousers. One cannot make out which ethic tradition this type of dressing derives from, except that is vaguely Asian. The video is thus not one that acknowledges the ethnic diversity that is a fact of life in Singapore but a simplistic attempt to over-ride the complexities of culture via the short-cut of dressing everyone uniformly. While portrayals of equality between the races in Singapore are usually conveyed by casting the requisite number of representatives from each of the major races in a music video, this video goes further in attempting to erase every mark of ethnic identity. In fact, this blurring of ethnic identity is so effective that even gender becomes erased. The formless costume obscures, except in close-ups, the distinction between the masculine and feminine as well. The Singapore identity – shapeless, vague, mere voices in harmony.

Noticeably missing from the video are the vast majority of Singaporeans called "Adults". It seems strange, given the accumulated memories of places, experiences and relationships that form the central thrust of the song, that Adults, who would be prime repositories of these memories, are absent. From every single shot. In fact, there seems to be a predominance of the very young: with only fleeting glimpses of teenage students, the images that pre-dominate are of pre-adolescent children. What would they know of Singapore one asks? But it is not what they know about Singapore that is important. It is the message that Singaporeans can be nostalgic about their memories as long as they retain the energy and vigour of youth, regardless of age, that matters. As long as they do not try to actualise their pining for "that" Singapore. "This" Singapore, is a country for the young. The old (regardless of age) burdened by their memories and lived experience, are irrelevant.

"1 mission"

I could suggest that the impending handing over of the State into the hands of new Prime Minister who wants to be seen as a fresh young successor (he turns fifty-two this year) to the dynasty that is now rightfully his, might motivate the political symbolism of youth. I could suggest that the sanitised images of Singapore merely confirm his reputed aversion for the common man. But no one would believe me. Or I could suggest, that old men wait in the shadows of Cabinet, appearing like apparitions, dark silhouettes waiting to take shape by the river that has brought us life ...

The Video