Singapore Dreaming (2006)

“Singapore Dreaming” is dark comedy about a typical low class Singaporean family coming to grip with reality. It deals with many life lessons about loss, ambition, and what really matters in a family.

There are many different societal norms in Singapore that are shown in this film. Some are very different then what we typically see in the U.S., and sometimes take for granted. Although some of these things do happen in other Asian societies. The first and most obvious shown in the movie is the sexist idea that men are more important than the women in the family. This is shown by the way the son in the family is treated over the daughter. He is given everything even after countless screw-ups on his part, to proceed in life. Yet the daughter who is smart and hard working does not get a thing from the family. Her boss even treats her with little or no respect. There is one point in the movie after the father wins the lottery and offers to give his son a large portion of it to start his own business; this is when I felt the differences in our society with theirs. I wanted to yell out to the father, “What are you doing? He is just going to throw that money down the drain!” I also felt sorry for the daughter, because she was almost ignored by her own family until the very end of the movie. When she got her money from the lawyer and the son was left with almost nothing, I felt like justice was served.

Some other Asian societies value the wealth of a son more than a daughter. They view them as someone who can carry on the family name and honor, where as the girl will not accomplish much in life, but to raise a family. This is shown in the movie when the father of the family is asking his son to bare him a grandson to carry on his name.

A funny part in the movie is the part about peeing in the elevators. Something about this just seems comical to me, but I am sure that this common nuisance is not funny to the people of Singapore. I have read that this is something the less fortunate do to rebel to the well off people of the city. This seems very childish and crude to someone like me, but it is a part of their society. In America I could only see bums in large cities doing something like this.

The family in the movie places a lot of emphasis on money as being the key to being happy. The father has a ritual of cutting out pictures of things he wants to buy, like cars. He also wants to join a country club that he is not familiar with in any way. The son buys a car and tries to look success full and to try to fit into the wealthier realm of society in this highly metropolitan city. The daughter curses her husband for not making enough money for their family to live properly, and makes him feel ashamed about it. I believe this movie shows us all those things to make us realize how we all covet these materialistic things. Even in death the son asks for a toy pool to burn at his father’s funeral. His death is shown as a very ritualistic performance, and is the point of the movie that the mother finally realized what she values most in life. This is a type of cleansing of the soul, where the materialistic things are burned and all that is left is the family. This makes the viewer see the truth behind the greedy son who deserves nothing and the hard working daughter who never stops giving. This breaks the societal norm of Singaporean families and shows that those who deserve kindness are based off merit and not sex.

The landscape of this movie is very urban as the city has almost no empty land to speak of. Condos line the coasts and smaller little apartments house the less fortunate. I did not see any typical homes in this city, but mainly these large housing structures. It reminds me of Manhattan in a way, but even they have brown stones, and central park. The other part of the landscape was the whole funeral parlor and parade at the end of the movie. This shows the tradition of how they morn the dead in Singapore.