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Oscar Wilde in Singapore: Ambivalence, Enforcement, and the Criminalization of Homosexuality

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An Erratum to this article was published on 06 April 2016

Abstract

The city state of Singapore, which recently celebrated 50 years of independence, still curiously retains a nineteenth century colonial penal code that criminalizes homosexuality. While state censorship discourages its citizens from engaging in public discourse that explores the implications of this penal code, colloquially known as 377A, discussions on the topic are still visible. High profile attempts to repeal the law through challenging the Singapore Constitution are reported in mainstream media outlets, and the artistic community also supports the repeal of the penal code. One of the most powerful instances of this was W!ld Rice’s 2013 all-male production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest followed by Moisés Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (the former played to international acclaim in Macau in 2014 and Brisbane in September 2015). This essay examines the relationship between art and state policy in Singapore by considering how artistic expressions that address social and cultural anxieties contribute to rather than subvert conversations about social policy-making. In this case, the seemingly comical Wilde plays produced an especially serious and nuanced analysis of the off-stage consensus problems in Singapore, among the LGBT community, heterosexual citizens, and the government. The plays effectively expose and articulate the deeply ambivalent sentiments that have come to characterize the 377A debate.

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Notes

  1. The Singapore Parliament rejected the possibility of extending equal benefits to single mothers, who are currently entitled to 12 weeks of maternity leave. In contrast, married mothers are entitled to 16 weeks of maternity leave, and working married mothers are eligible for child relief. Social and Family Development Minister Chan Chun Sing argued that “[t]hese additional benefits are given to encourage and support parenthood within the context of marriage”, and that “[t]his is the prevailing societal norm in Singapore [emphasis added], and one which we seek to reflect and preserve” (Salleh 2015).

  2. Founded by Ivan Heng, W!ld Rice has been noted in the New York Times as a company that has always been interested in staging provocative plays that address sensitive topics in Singapore. When asked to comment on Family Outing, a play by Joel Tan that centers on a family’s discovery of their dead son’s sexuality (he is gay), Heng noted that it was a play that needed to be staged in Singapore “because we’ve always been told that being gay goes against the core value of society, against family value, as if gay people don’t have families, and don’t love their families, and we need to dismantle that perception” (Kolesnikov-Jessop 2011). See Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, “Broken Taboos Take Center Stage in Singapore”.

  3. See in Ministry of Information and the Arts, National Arts Council (2000, 2005) Renaissance City Report: Culture and the Arts Renaissance in Singapore, and Chapter Two: Renaissance City 2.0.

  4. Government initiatives aimed at transforming Singapore into a world-class arts hub began in earnest in the 1990 s. Since 1998, the building of the Esplanade, one of the most spectacular and recognizable structures in Singapore, has been used as a classic example in illustrating the cart-before-the-horse analogy. The S$400 million dollar building was erected with aims to attract internationally renowned artists and productions to generate revenue for the country, but the maintenance costs and rental fees were too high for most local events with smaller budgets. This also calls attention to the long-standing problem that is beyond the scope of this essay: the attempt to support local arts development amidst the creation of a Global City of the Arts (GCA) in Singapore. A more detailed and sustained examination of the “global–local dialectic”, and the difficulty of the city state’s simultaneous attempt to go global, and at the same time remain local (“glocal”), see Chang (2000) and Wee (2003).

  5. Speakers, however, must register and receive approval before they can stage any form of public dialogues or performances at Speakers’ Park, and they must agree to conform to strict guidelines. For instance:

    Public speaking in the form of a lecture, talk, address, debate or discussion (whether or not in combination with a play-reading, recital, performance or an exhibition) at Speakers’ Corner, Hong Lim Park, is exempted from the provisions of the POA [Public Order Act; Act 15, 2009] if the following conditions are complied with:

    1. (a)

      the speaker must be a citizen of Singapore;

    2. (b)

      the speaker does not deal with any matter—

      1. (i)

        which relates, directly or indirectly, to any religious belief or to religion generally; or

      2. (ii)

        which may cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups in Singapore;

    3. (c)

      the speaker speaks using only any of the four official languages in Singapore, or any related dialect; and

    4. (d)

      the speaker does not display or exhibit, or cause to be displayed or exhibited (whether before, during or after the public speaking), any banner, flag, poster, placard, photograph, film, sign, writing or other visible representation or paraphernalia which contains any violent, lewd or obscene material (National Parks Singapore 2015).

  6. Most notably in Craft (1990) and Dollimore (1987).

  7. Tan (Tan 2011, p. 872) has discussed the social pressures that gay men are often forced to face at family gatherings; to express mutual concern and respect for each other, parents of marriageable children extend well-wishes and would often ask each other if their children will be getting married, or (if they are married) having children soon: “Chinese Singaporeans… consider marriage necessary for a child to become a full-fledged social adult”. See Tan’s “Go Home, Gay Boy! Or, Why Do Singaporean Gay Men Prefer to ‘Go Home’ and Not ‘Come Out’?”

  8. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell is a story about two male penguins that go on to adopt a baby penguin and all three live as a family; Jean Davies Okimoto and Elaine Mei Aoki’s The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption tells the tale of a lesbian couple’s decision to adopt a baby; and Robie H. Harris and Nadine Bernard Wescott’s Who’s In My Family: All About Our Families includes stories of same-sex parenting.

  9. The decision to remove the books from the library made international news in BBC, Forbes, and The Economist. In response to strong opposition, the library board decided to remove the books from the children’s section and catalogue them in the adults’ social sciences section instead.

  10. Though homosexual content can be shown for public consumption, programs that do so on free-to-air television channels must adhere to Media Development Authority’s (MDA) “Board of Film Censors Classification Guidelines” (2011). Section 11d of the Guidelines, which addresses concerns regarding sexual content, states that “[f]ilms that depict a homosexual lifestyle should be sensitive to community values. They should not, promote or justify a homosexual lifestyle. However, non-exploitative and non-explicit depictions of sexual activity between two persons of the same gender may be considered for R21” (MDA 2011, p. 18).

  11. For ESM Goh, this space is very much defined by cultural norms; he asserts that he does not promote homosexuality, and that “Singapore is still a traditional and conservative Asian society. Gays must know that the more they lobby for public space, the bigger the backlash they will provoke from the conservative mainstream. Their public space may then be reduced” (Weiss 2005, p. 272).

  12. “In Singapore, the courts have used what is known as the reasonable classification test to determine whether a statute that differentiates is consistent with Article 12. Under this test, a statute that differentiates is constitutional if the classification is based on an ‘intelligible differentia’, meaning a distinguishing feature that is discernible, and if the differentia bears a rational relation to the objective of the law” (Lum 2014).

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Correspondence to Jane Yeang Chui Wong.

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Wong, J.Y.C. Oscar Wilde in Singapore: Ambivalence, Enforcement, and the Criminalization of Homosexuality. Sexuality & Culture 20, 504–524 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-016-9338-1

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