The Freedom of Exclusion - Singapore Cultural Identity in Eating Air (1999)

Directed by Jasmine Ng and Kelvin Tong, Eating Air is a Singaporean coming of age/ absurdist film centred around the exploits of Ah Boy and his brushes with the local underbelly.

A ride through Singapore's Urban and Cultural maze

The opening the film features Ah Boy on a joyride through Singapore’s shopping district. He glides along the streets in his motorcycle, whizzing past malls, industrial buildings and construction works. The perspective of the urbanscape is lowered to the level of Ah Boy, centralising and following him. The use of jump cuts and an upbeat soundtrack further expresses how he feels that he is in a world of his own and is disconnected from his surroundings.

Freedom through exclusion in Singapore's society

Complemented by the narrative that follows, where Ah Boy spends most of the time on the road and among makeshift bazaars, he appears excluded from mainstream Singaporean society.

However, unlike the sombre silence that colours Khoo’s depiction of housing blocks in 12 Storeys, the energy and vibrancy of his story suggests that this exclusion from the upper-middle-class world does not prevent Ah Boy from enjoying his life.

As he is rendered out of place and insignificant by his surroundings, he turns to escapism and the creation of alternative identities.

The Speak Mandarin campaign and focus on homogeneity

In Sharon Siddique’s essay Singaporean Identity, she details how Singapore's focus on creating a homogeneous culture could have caused the erasure of ethnic cultures within Singapore. In her segment on the Chinese population of Singapore, she details that the diversity of dialects among the racial group was seen as an educational liability, resulting in national movements such as the “Speak Mandarin” campaign being introduced to standardise the Chinese language and foster a central Chinese community.

"The traditional carriers of Chinese culture in Singapore have been dialects, not Mandarin. Unless the content of these dialect cultures can be transferred to Mandarin...' the weakening of dialects may, in fact, mean the weakening of the cultural base'" (Siddique, 568).

A disinterest for disenfranchised groups to assimilate

One of his repeated lines of dialogue, “Books don’t read me, so I don’t read them,” (51.10), represents that he is disinterested in assimilating to mainstream Singaporean culture as he feels that his language and culture is not respected and validated by the nation. Thus, the upbeat presentation of his alienation from the urban landscape in the film’s opening suggests that while he is excluded from mainstream culture, he is at peace with this separation as a means of preserving his own identity and culture.

However, the opportunity that this exclusion offers is short-lived. While Ah Boy appears to revel in his freedom from mainstream codes of conduct, his antics on the fringe of society eventually lead him to a tragic end. Despite his nonchalant escapist attitude, there still exists a deep tension between him and the society that he lives in.