Wednesday, September 9, 2009

In defence of SPG

I went and looked up 'SPG' on google (it mostly turned up hits from that girl who posted nude pictures of herself on her blog),and then turned to wikipedia (go look it up yourself).
Taking into consideration Astrid's detailed explanation of SPGs, I came to a conclusion that SPGs cannot be blamed for being who/what they are. Don't be too quick to judge them. They are merely products of our society. How do I say this?

Look around us. Our colonial history is clearly and unashamedly celebrated in our society. The preservation of colonial buildings (see Singapore History Museum, The Arts House, Parliament (ok, the old one), etc) over our more traditional buildings (eg. shophouses, etc) is just one example that proves that our colonial roots take priority over our native ones. In history textbooks, Raffles takes precedence (and more space) than (I don't know) Sang Nila Utama.

Having been brought up in this sort of backgrounding (how are we to call ourselves even remotely post-colonial?), how can we not deny that The White Man is better than us (the Chinese, the Malays, the Indians, natives...)? Our education system was based upon the British one, and even though it's changing, it's changing to match up to the American one. NUS is now ANUS, the transformation from pax Britannia to pax Americana. (LOL). You get the idea.

If The White Man brought to us modernisation (Raffles 'founded' 'modern Singapore') and proved to be the catalyst that catapulted Singapore into first-world economy status (nevermind LKY and the PAP), he is obviously revered here in this society. You can't blame the SPGs for wanting to snag a white man. Why not, when they're so obviously the superior race, the superior society that's so celebrated here in Singapore?

Our ambitions to be first world (university, arts centre, economy, etc) are modelled after the British and the Americans. We celebrate European and American name brands over Asian, and even our own. How many of us simply consider Mac/Apple products to be better than Creatives' simply because it's not a local product? Local stuff suck, right? So why should our women want local men? Why shouldn't women want something they perceive to be better?

My conclusion is that we can't blame SPGs for wanting what they've been taught to want, for reaching for what they've been taught is better, even if they're not as discerning in their choices. We're all myopic in some way or another, and our excuse is - we don't know any better.

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