Monday 18 October 2004

Letter to ST Forum: Mixed media

Here's another one sent to ST Forum today.
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I refer to the forum letter by Mdm Kay Ren Tse on 18 October 2004.

I totally agree with her observation that the good and the salacious are all too confusingly mixed up in our local media, such that monitoring what I and my children see and hear has become a task of exacting vigilance.

Watching TV nowadays, with or without the children, almost always involves sitting ready with the remote control in hand, so that I can immediately switch the channel when the advertisements come on. Even during toddler programmes on Kids Central, we get advertisements promoting plays about homosexuality or cross-dressing, to name a few, not to mention the frequently aired trailers for violent and sexual late night programmes on Channel 5 which pepper all their earlier timed offerings.

Because of this, and as a working parent, I have since implemented a blanket ban on all airtime TV programmes for my young children, save a very select few, simply because I cannot expect their grandmother or the maid to sit there monitoring everything for them when I am out at work.

It is also virtually impossible to take a journey by public transport, of any kind, without seeing a woman or man clad only in underwear somewhere along the way. Our MRT stations and bus-stops are full of these pictures, as are the underground passes in the shopping districts where parents often bring their young children on weekends.

At the end of the day, I really can't see how such common and open displays of nakedness and violence in Singapore is in anyway indicative of societal progress, much as those who are clamouring for more "liberation" may argue. I would think that progress involves an uplifting of the human condition, in both mind, body and spirit. Progress is most certainly not to be found in the debasement of people through violence or the blatant exploitation of women's bodies just to sell some products.

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