One of my many pet peeves is the occasional conversation with the achingly cool, tech-savvy hipster. Oh, he’s so hip (it’s nearly always a ‘he’.) He’s all about the Web3, large language models and anything else that sounds vaguely Huxleyan and non-human.
And he thinks I’m an idiot.
Of course he does. I still have a “DVD collection“. An actual “DVD collection“, with punctuated air quotes and italics to emphasise his horror, along with the kind of facial contortions that suggest I slept with his wife on their wedding anniversary.
The dialogue is often priceless.
Well, I’m glad you asked, generic archetype. Where shall we start? How about Singapore has one of the smaller streaming libraries, compared to the rest of the world? How about I want to listen to a director’s commentary or a critic’s interpretation of a film’s influence? How about I want to watch a cinematic masterpiece more than once? Or how about I just want to reconnect with an artistic experience that had a profound impact upon my life, in a way that only the best art can?
Or, I could just scratch the DVD collection, literally – yes, I’m getting to Yale-NUS – and watch the next Fast and Furious movie, the one where Vin Diesel fights osteoporosis.
I mean, what do we need to keep art and literature for in Singapore? Books? DVDs? They just take up space on a tiny pragmatic island devoted to the Bentham’s principles of utilitarianism, right?
So when I read the latest artistic dumping story, that student associates working at the Yale-NUS College Library were ordered by staff to destroy more than 100 DVDs in April, including DVDs from The Criterion Collection, I understood the logic. There are licensing and copyright regulations to consider, when it comes to audio-visual materials, and we must take such considerations seriously. Literally. Always literally.
As a result, students were given carts of DVDs and asked to scratch them with a penknife. Artistic vandalism? No, this was literal utilitarianism at its finest. The Criterion Collection happens to be a company that lovingly restored important films, in all genres, from all over the world. Their releases are still bought in decent numbers. I have many on my shelf. But we move on. Efficiency endures. Follow the procedure. The process. What’s the big deal?
But do you know who doesn’t really follow procedure or process?
And I suspect she’s got an extensive DVD library and never spent her formative years taking a penknife to the artistic works of others. I’d also suggest that when she attended her first concert, she never said, “I will remember this night forever. The speed of the queue. Wow. It has changed my life. When I grow up, I’m going to be a queue organiser.”
Perhaps that’s who we are though. Terrific organisers. Efficient processors. We take great pride in our planning capabilities and rightly so. Other countries post videos of their globe-trotting artists. We post videos of fast-moving queues going to see globe-trotting artists.
Maybe the old Lee Kuan Yew line still holds for many people. Art is a luxury we cannot afford. Or a luxury that cannot make money. Or cannot pay the bills in these uncertain times. Fine. That’s a fair and rational approach to take. I get it. I’ve written 32 books and will be able to retire financially only when I’m dead.
But at least be honest about it, rather than feign shock over the “operational lapse” that led to hundreds of physical books being destroyed at NUS, or students being asked to scratch DVDs from the Criterion Collection with a penknife. (A penknife! I wouldn’t write that scene in a novel. The satire is too obvious.)
Because maybe the “operational lapse” is cultural, one that led to the closure of almost every bookstore chain here; one that led to Singapore having some of the highest piracy rates in the world; one that led to the arts being considered a non-essential industry during Covid; one that led to books and DVDs being destroyed at Yale-NUS without someone, somewhere, wondering if this really was the right course of action. And one that often leads to a lack of appreciation for books, DVDs and any other analogue, artistic collection in 2025. I mean, we’ve got piracy and AI for most of that stuff, right?
We do indeed. We can dump the lot. Outsource the lot. Rely on westerners and East Asians for our music and movies. Rely on hackers for our sports content and rely on AI to steal our literary collections. We can do all of these things and achieve international acclaim for what we’re really good at in Singapore…
Organising queues at a Lady Gaga gig.
Maybe we could host our own in-house arts awards, with categories like Best Walk to the Gig. Best Flow of Escalator Traffic. Best Book Removals. Best ‘Cut’ on a DVD Soundtrack.
Britain’s got the BAFTAs. America’s got the Grammys. Singapore could have the ‘Efficiencies’. They might not be the most artistic awards, but there’d never be any operational lapses.
Change Singapore’s Attitude Towards The Arts Or We’ll Keep Dumping Books
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Efficiency over artistry
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Neil Humphreys
Neil Humphreys is an award-winning writer and the best-selling author of 30 books in Singapore. He’s also a radio host, a podcaster, a public speaker and the proud owner of a head of silver hair.
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