Kirsten Han is a Singaporean blogger, journalist and filmmaker. She is also involved in the We Believe in Second Chances campaign for the abolishment of the death penalty. A social media junkie, she tweets at @kixes. The views expressed are her own.



I’ve recently done two things that I’ve rarely, if ever, done before: I watched a Jolin Tsai music video and breached my own savings plan (no more books, Kirsten, you have nowhere to put them!) to buy a graphic novel.

I only have Singapore to thank for this widening of my horizons; it would never have occurred to me to do either of these things if various government bodies had not done what they did.

Last weekend the news emerged that Jolin Tsai’s song and music video We’re All Different, Yet The Same could not be broadcast on television and radio. In true Singaporean fashion, this move was reported as not a ban, then as a ban, but only a little bit, because semantics.

On Saturday, The Straits Times reported that graphic novelist Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye had had its $8,000 publication grant revoked because of its “sensitive content” that did not meet “funding conditions”. (It now says that it was because the graphic novel could undermine “the authority or legitimacy of the government”.)

I, of course, immediately went on to the publisher’s website and ordered myself a copy. Over the weekend The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye completely sold out of its print run, proving that I’m not the only Contrary Mary in Singapore.

Clickbait sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed should really step aside; no one can make things go viral as quickly as the Singaporean government. It has become a pattern too clear to ignore: we’ve seen it with Alan Shadrake’s Once A Jolly Hangman, Roy Ngerng’s blog The Heart Truths, Tan Pin Pin’s To Singapore, With Love, the Dim Sum Dollies’ The History of Singapore: Part 2, and even Amos Yee’s potty-mouthed YouTube video, among others. No amount of PR or marketing can beat a court case, a lawsuit, a ban, or an overzealous classification in catapulting something fairly obscure into celebrity stardom overnight.

Human beings are painfully uncooperative when it comes to things like bans. The more you tell people that they can’t see or do something – especially if it’s for reasons such as “sensitive content” – the more they want to see or do it.

We’re long past the time when bans or restrictions could actually stop people from gaining access to materials, or frighten people into averting their gaze. In this day and age, trying to maintain some semblance of an official top-down narrative of Singapore’s history and politics is a futile, counter-productive task.

It would be much more helpful for the establishment to recognise that Singapore is a country of diverse experiences and narratives and to be able to talk openly and honestly about them. State funding, like the publication grant originally given to The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, is not meant to be used to perpetuate just one story as told by those wielding the power. State funding should be used to support the wide range of stories that exist in our country, so that we as a nation can face up to the complexities and nuances of our lives, our history and our identities. It’s the only way we can truly grow and mature as a society.