Stateless Citizens: Apathy as Defence Mechanism in Amanda Lee Koe’s Ministry of Moral Panic
Stateless Citizens: Apathy as Defence Mechanism in Amanda Lee Koe’s Ministry of Moral Panic
By Ho Kin Yunn
Abstract
In a modern, ‘civilized’ society, and particularly in Singapore’s structurally organized environment, do forms of moral panic exclusively equate to aggressive displays of public anxiety and fear? If a state inculcates and perpetuates amongst its citizens a form of ‘institutionalized panic’ toward behaviours it deems incongruent with the conventional national narrative, could this panic manifest in an established, comfortable apathy, leading to a state of indifference? These are the questions that, I argue, are raised and addressed in Amanda Lee Koe’s Ministry of Moral Panic, through her use of characterisation, narrative structure, and depictions of apathetic conflict, external and internal, displayed by her ‘atypical’ characters. I argue that moral panic masked as a passive form of state-backed discrimination causes those at the receiving end to feel alienated and removed from their own national discourse, and, in Koe’s collection, retaliation takes the form of apathy toward circumstances perpetuated by a state whose ideologies and inclinations are in and of themselves apathetic toward those who don’t conform to the state-sanctioned national rhetoric. Instead of a rebellion or complete breakaway from such a situation, Koe’s atypical characters continue to live in a state of resigned apathy, spiritually revoked from citizenship in their own country.
1. Introduction
Throughout history, instances of moral panic have been used to justify extreme public policy and government action. The Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s were a notable example of “a craze or panic” (Goode & Ben-Yehuda 150) in which irrational and baseless accusations were made concerning the supposed practice of witchcraft. Laws were arbitrarily created and broken in accordance with Puritan ideology concerning the supposed dangers of the few individuals accused of witchery. In 1897, thousands were killed in Brazil by the Brazilian military for the alleged cultish characteristics of their shared beliefs. The massacre of the group, a remote community in Canudos, was egged on by “landowners, the Catholic Church, and political elites,” who, through press campaigns, sought to create a “public panic” concerning the existence of the Canudos community, and swayed public opinion to such an extent that only its “total destruction” would have calmed the masses (150). These events represent different “explosions of fear and concern” throughout history that revolve around “specific perceived threat[s],” and in each instance, a minority group was perceived “to be responsible for the threat,” but was later exonerated only after a “sober assessment of the evidence” was conducted (150). A more recent example occurred in 1950s U.S., where an anti-communist Red Scare resulted in thousands of Americans being “labelled as subversives,” subsequently losing their jobs (Victor 541). While this particular incident brings to mind the Singaporean example of the 1987 Marxist Conspiracy and Operation Spectrum, for brevity’s sake, as well as a lack of concrete evidence, the incident will not be discussed further, save to serve as a contextualizing reminder of how state accusations can proceed with impunity despite a lack of said objective evidence, and resulting in devastating impacts on the accused individuals.
Such is the nature of a state-backed moral panic whereby the fears, baseless or otherwise, of the majority and those in power justify the persecution of a minority group, silenced and powerless to contest the circumstances exacted upon them. While these historical examples involving physical violence would be considered extreme in a modern first-world nation such as Singapore, this paper examines, through the perspectives of the atypical characters in Amanda Lee Koe’s debut short-story collection, Ministry of Moral Panic (MoMP), that in a sterilized society like Singapore’s, moral panic towards such atypical existences incongruent to the dominant national narrative is manifested in more subtle, everyday forms, and when facilitated by public policy, becomes incorporated into the daily routines and perceptions of the majority. What results is a sort of sedated oppression, perpetually exercised by the majority who comfortably exist within the bounds of these majoritarian policies, upon those who do not. Through instances in MoMP, I argue that this sedated oppression takes the form of a maintained apathy, and by definition a lack of empathy, toward Koe’s nonconformist characters. In my deconstruction of the process by which this apathy is achieved in MoMP, I contend that it germinates from a silencing of the minority, followed by an insistence by the majority to remain in denial to the plight of those who are deemed to be incongruent to society’s dominant narrative; this eventually leads to policies and social norms that are apathetic toward the needs and desires of these atypicals, forcing them out of alignment with society and inculcating feelings of displacement within their own communities. This displacement and misalignment experienced by Koe’s characters leads to emotional distance and detachment, not just toward their external circumstances but also inwardly toward their own situations and states of being. The resignation creates a sort of cyclical apathetic environment whereby apathy itself becomes a defence mechanism against the apathetic forms of panic displayed by the majority, whether derived externally or internally.
Examining the external and internal apathy of these characters’ experiences is thus Koe’s way of questioning the comfortable ignorance of mainstream society, thereby bringing us back to the question as to the validity of apathy as a defence mechanism. A neglected popstar from a bygone era; an ordinary waitress with an abnormal longing; an inspired autobiography of an icon of racial uncertainty; and a domestic helper born into circumstances beyond her control, existing outside the boundaries of a conventional life and conventional desires—Koe’s conceptualization of these atypical characters’ experiences aid in her attempts to call out the baseless moral panic established by bureaucracy against the ‘victimless crimes’ of the minority. By uncovering their hardships and resulting resignation, as well as shining a spotlight on the majority of society’s apathetic treatment of their circumstances, her collection of stories brings about another effect: it establishes a moral panic of its own in the form of an ‘anti-denial’ movement that seeks to criminalize the indifference and lack of empathy displayed by the guilty majority who choose denial and ignorance in order to live comfortably in a society that is framed by majority-favouring policies. Yet, is it not logical, and even reasonable, that social policies in a democratic society, by nature, are enacted based on majority opinion? One thing is for sure: whether it is in the form of apathy or a tangible applied pressure, moral panic seems destined to be responded to in kind.
2. Diagnosing moral panic in Moral Panic: symptoms and causes
2.1. How moral panic manifests as a rejection of society’s outliers
A defining characteristic of moral panic is that it has almost always been exercised upon the minority by the majority; a moral panic exacted by a minority group against a more powerful majority will never have the same debilitating effect. Like any other social force, what gives moral panic its power is largely related to the “collective definition” of the particular problem, or, in other words, the cause of the panic (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 151). What gives this ‘problem’ weight, thereby justifying the grounds for action, is thus the collective concern of a group of people large enough that their collective opinion outweighs any opposing ideology, thereby silencing the latter and legitimizing the former. Such a legitimization is solidified through the involvement by an official body, typically in the form of government, and particularly one that is democratic and thus structured and ‘legitimized’ through majoritarian policies. While there have been extreme examples throughout history of moral panics enforced violently through officiated government force, such as the “phantasmic” moral panic concerning Satanism and white male homosexuality during South Africa’s apartheid (Falkof 121), moral panic takes on a far subtler form in a modern first-world nation such as Singapore, where the state’s “specially planned optics” facilitates its policy planning by aligning it with the majority opinion (Ng), particularly when conservatism is adopted as a stance, as Singapore remains “a fairly conservative society” (Chong, “Singapore society still ‘fairly conservative’ but the young, educated more open towards homosexual issues: IPS”).
This involvement by the state in targeting behaviours incongruent to the conservative national narrative is a central theme in Koe’s stories in MoMP, and she addresses this in an unabashed and uncensored manner. In the collection’s first story, ‘Flamingo Valley’, the central character, Deddy Heikel, recounts a past incident, likely in the 1970s, where his drainpipe jeans are confiscated in public by the “Chinese authorities” (Koe 7); here, Koe purposefully includes the race of the constable enforcing this law, ensuring that the racial aspect of this display of power difference, usually unspoken in nature, is put under the spotlight. This is characteristic of much of Koe’s writing in her collection. By following this incident with Heikel’s imagining of the authorities secretly squeezing “their fat Chinese calves” into his jeans “back at HQ ... checking themselves out in the mirror” (8), Koe uses this comical and slightly derogatory imagery to ridicule the rationale behind such laws, at the same time using it to show Heikel’s inner feelings of retaliation toward the nature of his supposed offence. Choosing Heikel as her protagonist is also indicative of her championing of individuals who go against mainstream ideology; a daydreaming Malay musician fantasizing himself adopting John Lennon’s lackadaisical attitude towards life—Heikel admires Lennon’s “Oh, hello” retort when caught by his wife for his adultery with Yoko Ono (7). Heikel’s “rock star” approach to life is inherently in conflict with the conservative views and “workaholic culture” (Tang) of Singapore society, and his mild brushes with the law symbolizing this collision between his liberalism and the state’s conservatism not only indicates the illegitimacy of his own views, but also reveals the crimelessness in his wearing of the drainpipe pants, since they were merely confiscated, making this less of an enforcement of law and more of an enforcement of values.
Koe’s examination of the moral politics behind these behaviours—the execution of the state’s conservative stance by a majority race and the rebellious feelings of opposition by the more liberal Heikel—establishes the status quo that largely dictates the call and response of her various characters. This status quo is not just enacted by the authorities or direct enforcers of the law. Heikel’s romantic pursuit of Ling Ko Mui, the Chinese daughter of a business owner, is ridiculed by Ling’s Chinese suitors, and Heikel ends up being beaten up for it, with no indication that his attackers are reprimanded for their physical assault (Koe 5–6). The attack, resulting not just in injury but also in Heikel’s guitar being “stamped ... to bits,” is also an act of rebuke against Heikel’s unorthodox pursuit of a Chinese girl and unorthodox life path. “Did you ever think ... that she would really go with a Malay boy?” (6) taunts his Chinese “merchant’s son” attacker, who is later seen driving a Rolls Royce (9), solidifying the attack as an act of policing against Heikel’s clear violation of the status quo: Chinese should date Chinese, Malays should date Malays, and the poor certainly don’t date the rich. While this is, by now, expected behaviour of the attacker, considering Koe’s characterization of the conceited conservative majority, it is Heikel’s reaction that starts to reveal the deep-seated resignation formed within individuals oppressed by the system that governs the society which they call home. Though initially defiant against the merchant’s son’s condemnation, shown by his determination to succeed as a musician in order to prove him wrong, Heikel, upon attaining this success, laments to himself:
... but deep down I knew he was right—she would never have been mine. (7)
This defeated response, atypical of his usual spirited demeanor, indicates Heikel’s inner resignation and acceptance of the insurmountability of his oppressive external circumstances; that no matter the measure of his success, there will be structures and modes of being that cannot be changed. Koe shows us here that defiance and even hard work are not enough to overcome inherent social structures that cripple one’s mobility depending on his social status.
2.2. Using ideology and cultural norms to normalize moral panic
Koe’s weaving of these examples into her story shows how the state’s officiating of its various conservative moral panics against non-conservative and non-status-quo behaviours trickles down into the psyche of the majority population. ‘Pawn’, the third story in Koe’s collection, follows up with this sentiment, but introduces another caveat in its confrontation of a culture steeped in superficial and materialistic desires, which shows how state-cultivated ideologies help to normalize its various forms of moral panic. As with all of MoMP’s central characters, Delia initially hopes to live a life incongruent with the established norms of her society, in this case the consuming materialism and superficiality of her colleagues. This was not without trying, however, as it is stated that “she once collected dresses one size too small” and “bought mineral make-up in hues and iridescences she was unsure of.” (Koe 35), showing that her disengagement results from her genuine experience in her inaptitude toward such lifestyles. Koe’s choice to write Delia as someone who by society’s definitions “wasn’t beautiful,” with her “plump sloping shoulders” and “no collarbones” (35), thus reinforces that, as someone not naturally disposed to employ the “coquettish smiles” of her prettier female counterparts (34) to get what they want, Delia exists as an outlier unable to equally pursue such definitions of self-worth that the general Singaporean working culture, which serves as the main point of contact to society for Delia, generally champions. Koe makes sure to tie the importance of physical appearances to that of materialistic desire, not just by the desire for new clothes and make-up but also in the “pretty women’s” eating habits in the form of “salad bars and gourmet sandwich and wrap cafés,” expensive establishments compared to the “limp bee hoon and nasi lemak [that] could be bought cheaply” from the kiosks that “Delia and her rank would make sojourns to.” Koe then makes it clear that “it wasn’t that the pretty women earned more,” but it was simply that “they had better reasons to eat better, to see and be seen” (35, 36). We thus see that materialism and superficiality breed more of the same; that it pays to indulge in these things and to look good on the outside if society champions these traits in the first place. Eventually, Delia herself resigns and seemingly conforms to the superficial double standards that pervade society. Upon seeing Lei, the new hawker from China who was “a beautiful boy in a dirty blue singlet,” her throat becomes “thick and scratchy” (36), a biological response that reveals her suppressed, but very tangible, superficial attraction to him, despite having earlier gone against such superficiality. Eventually, in her desire for Lei, her resistance to these superficial standards completely fails, and her coping mechanism succumbs to the very sort of ideal image that she tries to reject: she dons a dress “one size too small” and has “bronzed her eyelids” (40)—over the top when considering Lei’s “dirty blue singlet”—in an attempt to look good for Lei. Koe makes sure to remind us on the subsequent page that their relationship is built entirely on Lei’s material gain from Delia in the form of money and gifts like a laptop, which his bunkmates use to watch porn on (41). Thus, the effects of a capitalist-driven, materialistic society come into light. Lei’s status as a lowly paid migrant worker enhances, and complicates, this critique on materialism by showing how, having been locked into an established system that gives lowly educated foreigners no chance of progression, he begrudgingly resorts to selling his very being in order to attain these materialistic possessions that put him in good standing with his peers; this is indeed exactly what Delia, who gifts Lei with material and financial benefits in order to have him “[stroll] down Robertson Quay” with her while other ladies look on in disbelief (46), is doing. The last line of the story states that, through this almost contractual agreement, “Lei is supplanted, and Delia wins” (47), but this victory is superficial at best. In actuality, she is a victim to the shallowness of society, and her apathetic response takes the form of her shutting off her heart completely, knowing that Lei doesn’t truly love her.
Hence, we are introduced to the materialistic and superficial values that pervade Delia’s surroundings and forms the foundation upon which the moral panic enacted upon her is based. Delia’s initial fears that “[donning] a pretty dress ... was to not know her place,” and that “the pretty women would call her bluff” (Koe 35), shows that such forms of moral panic are more subtle in the sense that there isn’t any outright oppression but more of a calling-out culture and a frowning upon of someone who doesn’t do what they are “supposed to do” based on established social norms. Just as the status quo in ‘Flamingo Valley’ dictates that one should only mingle with those of their own race and equal social status, here the narrative seems to be that pretty dresses are only meant to be donned by pretty girls, and to go against this rule would cause one to “be a laughingstock” (35). By establishing this narrative as commonplace societal knowledge, Koe challenges what we have come to accept as normative due to cultural directions that our society has taken thanks to the country’s “strong focus on material life and peer comparison” (Ho), and how the majority of society, comfortable in this established status quo, would only “demand for change” based on “economic rather than political grounds” (Chan and Wong 6). By normalizing these directions, Koe suggests that we inadvertently normalize the discrimination, rejection of abnormality, and aversion to change that naturally accompanies it.
3. Staging a character defence
3.1. Understanding the positions of Koe’s ‘atypical’ characters
Naturally, establishing a baseline moral standard on socially acceptable behaviours results in the repression of all forms of divergence, forcing any atypical behaviour to either be quashed entirely, or be performed privately to avoid scrutiny. It is this unearthing and subsequent interrogation of private lives that Koe uses to bring to light the internal and external struggles of her atypical characters as a result of such normative assumptions. In ‘The King of Caldecott Hill’, Koe explores false characterizations and the over-idealization of media personalities through the lens of her featureless protagonist—she remains nameless and no physical description of her is provided. However, Koe’s focus is on the atypical masked by this very ordinariness, and in this story particularly the kind exhibited in private, thus shedding light on these unseen actions that constitute the genuine essence of a person's being. The story opens with a brief backstory that contextualizes the waitress’s preoccupation with a particular Channel 8 actor nicknamed the “The King of Caldecott Hill” for his frequent roles in the staple “7pm and 9pm” serials. It is a complex backstory; we learn she never had a constant father figure in her life but found some sense of constancy in the actor’s consistent characterization as “always the good guy in the shows” (Koe 50). In this case, the waitress’s upbringing has been shaped by the actor’s various roles in film, who have become a sort of interchanging father figure in her life. Unable to tell him “what he was to her; is to her,” she resorts to “furtively” spooning his leftover food into her mouth to fulfil this sense of a blood connection between her and the actor. Her sheepishness in the act shows that she understands its taboo nature, thus performing it privately to fulfil this atypical need born out of an atypical home situation. Certainly, being raised by a single parent isn’t an unheard-of situation, but in Singapore’s heteronormative society, where the family unit is the standard nuclear structure, this is not the norm. When the actor attempts suicide, the waitress is interrogated by the authorities as a result of associating herself with the actor’s own disenchantment toward society. The interrogation by the authorities, merely performing their “job,” is the state’s way of officially probing such behaviours that result in unnatural circumstances. More than this interrogation, the actor’s suicide, the waitress’s precarious family background, and finally, the actor’s comatose state, “half his face ... destroyed by the bullet tearing through” (60), are further proof of a grim reality that constantly grates against the periodic reminiscing of the actor’s memorable scenes on TV that Koe peppers throughout the story. Koe seems to corroborate the existence of the gritty reality of an underlying complexity that potentially permeates even the most veneered stories in our society. In this we are thus offered justifications for her characters’ atypicality, almost as if we were interrogators ourselves.
In some instances, Koe offers less of a backstory and more of her signature circumstances in which apathetic treatment is met with an apathetic response to reveal the external circumstances that hold her characters psychologically ransom. ‘Every Park on This Island’ showcases this phenomenon, and just like in ‘Pawn’, highlights the accompanying gender inequalities established as social norm that have an influence on the behaviours of her atypical characters. In a particular scene, the story’s narrator, Sledge, bluntly and apathetically responds to an ah-lian’s questioning that her companion, an American exchange student named Bear, had just voiced his sexual interest toward her. This results in an altercation whereby Sledge is slapped and the ah-lian’s companions, or “ah-bengs,” physically assault Bear (Koe 78). During this assault, the ah-lian, having received no response from Sledge after the slap, simply stands beside her “without animosity” as both “watch the fight casually.” The impassiveness displayed by Sledge speaks of her emotional estrangement from the situation, symbolizing an acceptance of her companion’s situation based on his obvious affront to the ah-lian, given the norms that dictate society. However, there is more to the scene if the larger context of the story is considered. Sledge’s friendship with Bear seems more like a guide-tourist relationship, considering her task to take him to “every park on this island” (64), but more than this, it is Bear’s eventual sexual advancement of Sledge that cheapens the friendship into a stereotypical Caucasian’s shallow exoticization of Asian culture. Koe certainly understands this stereotype—Sledge’s given name is due to Bear’s unwillingness to attempt her Chinese name (66)—but twists it somewhat by her painting of Bear as a “loser in America” (76), and in the halting of his initial sexual advancement where he mentions that “[he thinks he] can only do it with white girls” (73), a seemingly valiant display of honesty and self-restraint that gets in the way of his own immediate pleasure. Yet, the gender stereotypes hold firmly in place: a few moments earlier, he mentions that he “[doesn’t] want an easy lay” (73). We question whether this is demeaning or respectful, but the evidence points to the former, as he later again makes sexual advances on Sledge after the East Coast Park altercation (78). Despite being a “loser” in America’s social standards, it thus seems that Bear still conforms to stereotypical notions of masculinity whereby the male wishes to enjoy the thrill of romantic pursuit. Observing the altercation scene with this knowledge, we can thus see the nuanced gender dynamics at play in which the men are active, physical participants, while the women accept their assumed roles as mere passive onlookers and not active agents of the action. Speaking of this exact scene in his review of MoMP in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), Ng states that “a less experienced writer could easily have made the situation more melodramatic,” possibly by having the girls fight each other as well. The girls’ passive roles as non-participants thus speak of the apathetic resignation toward their disempowered social circumstances that is intentionally characteristic of many of Koe’s characters.
3.2. A pointless power struggle: the silenced desires of Koe’s atypical characters
While this passive resignation toward one’s position and state in life is intensely portrayed in Zurotul’s character in the collection’s two-part story ‘Two Ways to Do This’, arguably the book’s most telling example of a minority at the brunt of a cultural and social moral panic based on stereotypical notions and established moral standards, Koe makes sure to remind us that in such characters there too exist hopes and desires for a fairer existence. Koe makes use of the untold backstory of a migrant worker that allegorizes the reality that as Singaporeans, we generally do not look into the stories of the migrants who arrive on our shores to make a living. Zurotul’s backstory highlights several instances of complete apathy, the most appalling of these being the rape she silently endures by four of her village’s men. Raped in the paddy fields in which “she was happiest” (Koe 83), the setting of the act shows the depressing lack of safety in a place where she felt most comfortable, and the openness of the crime, committed in a public space, only intensifies the absurd lack of repercussions for her perpetrators or remorse for Zurotul herself. Telling her father what had transpired, “his face had remained passive.” He then suggests that Zurotul “marry her rapist,” indicating not just his estrangement to the traumatic situation, but also revealing the paternalistic, pragmatic nature of his apathetic solution. Here, Koe uses familiar imagery as the father “stroked his beard” while considering his daughter’s plight to re-invoke the recurring motif of the removed father figure in MoMP. Yet, Koe’s treatment of another male character in the story shows that she is aware of the nuances and conditions in these gender imbalances. In the scene, Zurotul and the other domestic helper trainees are “rounded up ... in a neat row” (87) like “livestock up for inspection” (89) by prospective employers, when a couple enters, the woman sporting a “perfect perm, chestnut-coloured, with no dark roots showing” (87), implying a lack of weakness, and contrasting her husband, whose “face was unremarkable.” From here, Koe drops behavioural hints that imply the power dynamics of the couple’s relationship. When asked by his wife to choose between Zurotul and another trainee, Wati, the husband “indicated with a hand—rather than a finger—his choice: Zurotul” (89). The unassertiveness of his choice reflects his understanding that his word doesn’t account for much; this is confirmed when the wife “pointed to Wati with a manicured index finger,” assertively vetoing his choice. What’s interesting is that the final, official decision is still left to the husband, signified by the wife and agent’s “[turning] towards the husband, expectant” for his confirmation (89), as if it were needed at all, showing that even if typical, traditional gender roles aren’t practically adhered to, they are still recognized on paper. Koe establishes here that even if someone belongs to a social class that is traditionally ascribed power, they do not always exist by such social norms, and are therefore not immune to subtle, hidden forms of repression.
Also relevant is how, in their shared state of disempowerment, Zurotul and the husband form a brief but telling connection. Upon entering, “it was only the man Zurotul saw” (Koe 87), and afterwards, the husband glances at Zurotul twice, first to extend her a special smile while only casting “a sweeping gaze” on the other trainees, and then again when “the man looked at Zurotul for a moment” after the decision to choose Wati had been made (89). Koe draws our attention to this look through Zurotul’s recognition that “she’d seen the look before,” and through context of Zurotul’s history and knowledge of future events in the narrative, it is natural to suspect a male gaze that not only foreshadows the story’s second part, but also signifies the beaten down but not entirely extinguished masculinity of the husband. However, Koe affirms the true source of Zurotul’s recognition of the look as that belonging to a “village hag,” a witch-like character herself ousted from Zurotul’s hometown, whose face, along with the husband’s, reads: “this is out of my hands; life is out of my hands” (93). This goes hand in hand with how the repressed characters in ‘Two Ways’ and MoMP’s other stories acknowledge and even come to terms with their lack of agency to act on their desires. The connection between the village hag and the husband also affirms to us that even in their repression, Koe’s atypical characters still privately hold some hope to tread a path in life in which they can be themselves, as well as for a sense of solidarity toward those in similar situations of disempowerment.
Nevertheless, it remains surprising for Zurotul that “she still had it in her to want things” (Koe 90), having resigned herself to a life where she merely gets what she deserves. To address this, Koe brings in the recurring statement throughout ‘Two Ways’: “Zurotul was made for love” (83, 90, 105); we later learn that this epithet was given to her at birth by the “village hag” following a disturbing ritual in which she consumes the placenta from Zurotul’s birth raw (93–94). In this instance, however, Koe follows up the epithet with the disclaimer “but she was also born to lose” (90). Koe uses Zurotul’s belief in this statement as the definitive example of a person who, through instances in her life, has been led to believe that the cruelties she’s endured are her birthright, even though it is certainly a person’s external circumstances that largely dictate the social hardships they endure. Also evident from these statements is that love does not equate to happiness; that while she deserves love, Zurotul also deserves the hardships and tragedies in her life—the two are not mutually exclusive. A separation of the concepts of love and victory thus manifests: if the tragic events that befall her are part of this losing narrative, then an opposite reality, one in which the rape never occurred and also one where she is chosen instead of Wati, should be considered the victory.
The idea of love as a concept removed from happiness or victory is continued in the subsequent story ‘Love Is No Big Truth’. If we are to acknowledge Koe’s intentional crafting of her stories’ details to create meaning, we can then recognize that there is a distinct purpose in her separating of the two parts of ‘Two Ways to Do This’ with the insertion of this story, which begins with the following statement:
There is no such thing in the world as I cannot live without you; you cannot live without me. The earth spins. Time passes. Rice is eaten. What is there to disprove? (Koe 95).
We are immediately presented with a bleak, pragmatic view of love, one that does not seem concerned with compassion or romance. The story’s central character spends the narrative soliloquizing on her failed marriage in which she has no agency; when, on their wedding night, he asks her to “swear ... on the honour of [her] family name” that she is a virgin, she does so despite wishing to slap him, justifying to herself that “it would be difficult to live together” if “[they] were going to start it off on the wrong foot” (96), and when her husband brings home another woman, she moves out “to save [herself] and [her] daughter some face” (95). This stereotypical narrative seems to enforce the notion that genuine love seems impossible for those whose love is dependent on the arbitrary reciprocation of those who hold power over them. Yet, as stereotypical as this may be, in her interview with QLRS, Koe mentions that the story’s opening statement came “directly from an old lady [she] knew” (Ng), signifying the reality of the ideology behind the statement as it pertains to society. Koe’s placement of this story here reminds us of the apathetic reality those at the losing end of traditional notions of power and authority have to silently endure.
This reality comes to a vivid conclusion in the second and concluding part of ‘Two Ways To Do This’, in which Zurotul, now working for a married couple whose behaviour and characteristics bear resemblance to the married couple in the previous part, finds herself in an illicit relationship with her male employer, who himself has been “invisibly pummeled” by his wife’s “tantrums” and “expectations of deference” (Koe 106). Through enduring this unseen discrimination, the husband is represented as a weaker half of a binding union/contractual agreement who has the illusion of choice but understands that he must ultimately defer to their other half who, through years of exacting repression, has risen to represent the established authority. Here, Koe presents marriage as a contractual, forced, and prolonged union, and Zurotul, the outlier, is its unruly, unkempt, and certainly unworthy distraction. At this point, Zurotul has fallen in love with the husband, and in the hopes of causing him to reciprocate these feelings, performs a disturbing ritual involving the blood from her menstruation “on the night of a full moon” (107), bearing similarity to the occult-like actions of the village hag. The ritual seemingly works, and on top of facilitating the illicit relationship, there is a brief conferment of power to both Zurotul and her new lover; apart from their cheap thrills experienced by “[doing] it in the master bedroom’s en suite bathtub” (109), the husband, though continuing to give in to his wife, “now did so in an ever-so-slightly ironic way” (110), suggesting some restoration of his autonomy and inner confidence. But this fragile empowerment is easily shattered upon the wife’s discovery of the affair, resulting in Zurotul’s complete expulsion from Singapore, having been branded “a loose, dangerous woman” (110). The turn of events seems to prove that power ultimately belongs to those who have monopolized it through enforcement of moral standards via bureaucratic and official means. This reading is amplified by the fact that the second part of ‘Two Ways To Do This’ essentially retcons events of the first part, in which Zurotul isn’t chosen by the couple. Whether these employers are a new couple altogether, or if for some reason Wati had been switched for Zurotul, the plotting of the second part essentially revives Zurotul’s earlier desire to be hired by the couple, enabling her to relive it as a victory rather than defeat. Therein lies the point of interest: that even in this small victory, Zurotul eventually loses to the much larger forces in the form of the moral standards which have branded her a taboo and even a ridiculed mockery by the wife; also of interest is the fact that the wife “[opts] to stay” in the marriage (111), another nod to the seeming imperviousness of these state-officiated bonds as well as the wife’s apathetic reversion to her assumedly loveless marriage. Whatever the case, there is no breakthrough for Zurotul and the system does not change—her relationship with her employer remains forever illicit in the eyes of society. Koe shows that in Singapore’s strictly parented traditional society, there is no chance of legitimization for any way of life that empowers repressed characters such as Zurotul to obtain lasting happiness or victory.
3.3. Apathy begets apathy: the invalidity of fighting fire with fire
It thus seems pointless to go against the establishment when the defining characteristics of your existence are found to be incongruent with the institutionalized traditions and standards of society. In the face of such overwhelming odds and consequent repression thanks to the moral panic exacted upon them, Koe shows that her characters’ modes of defence ultimately manifest as resignation and acceptance of their repressed states. In the case of Zurotul, this defence manifests as her eventual self-acceptance as an entity entirely shunned by society. Upon her expulsion from Singapore, she returns to her village in Indonesia, and from there, back to the “old shack” that once housed the village hag, eating the hag’s leftover food and donning her robe (112). To complete the transformation, she proclaims the exact same blessing (or curse) upon her unborn child from her affair with the husband, thereby completing, as well as initiating, what seems to be an endless cycle. Koe casts ambiguity on the ending of this story; is this Zurotul’s liberation, and thus victory, or is her assuming of the exiled-figure role of village hag considered her self-imprisonment? What is for certain is that this resigned, almost stoical, conclusion is a result of two forces: the external pressures exerted upon Zurotul and her own form of defence in her full acceptance of her fate. From her father’s casual dismissal of her rape, and even how, during the horrible event itself, she had “stopped clawing at the men,” “her pupils ... dilated” (85), indicating the catatonic state she assumes in order to cope with the trauma, thus is the state of detachment and emotional estrangement that make up the narrative conclusions of Koe’s atypical characters, who, having undergone external and internal pressures, finally accept their fates as lesser members of their own societies.
4. Apathy and resignation in Singapore literature
While these instances of repression, discrimination, and apathetic resignation experienced by Koe’s atypical characters might be fictional, Koe affirms in an interview that they represent but a “sharp lens through which to view goings-on in contemporaneous Singapore,” given the “tension between the triangle of paternalistic/bureaucratic puppetry, social norms/‘Asian values’ and inter/intrapersonal actualization” (Koe). This interpersonal/intrapersonal representativeness of the genuine circumstances faced by actual people is further affirmed when considering the available literature on these issues. Another anthology, Hook and Eye, consists of a collection of stories set in Singapore that “speak of struggles and persistence” (Holden). One such story, also centered around a migrant worker, continues on with the themes of negligence and silent discrimination toward minority groups, but also shows instances of a resignation toward one’s own unfortunate circumstances based on the normalizing of ideologies that support this very self-denigration. In ‘Rich Man Country’, a migrant worker sustains a workplace injury due to the negligence of his Chinese “overseers” and “supers” (Liow 112), but feels in his predicament that he has only “shamed himself once more” (112). The worker even remains thankful, thinking “there were surely worse places where such things could happen” (115), revealing the worker’s innate and maintained justification of the predicaments that befall him. Throughout the story, the worker remains nameless, but Liow gives us adjectives to describe him and his fellow workers: “men laden with their own fatigue,” and “ant-sized” (123), reveal their weary smallness amidst their sprawling urban surroundings, and by showing his peers calling him “Country boy ... Here, rich man country” (119), the worker is made to feel even more alien and not worthy of being where he is. Liow employs a non-chronological narrative structure to evoke the disorientation the worker is experiencing having sustained a head injury, but also to intersperse moments of the worker’s backstory into the current events, essentially juxtaposing memories of his loved ones and dreams of economic progress with the painful reality in which he lies motionless “at the back of a lorry” (125) while his three Chinese superiors debate what they should do with him. Once again, his fate is entirely subject to the forces that govern him, and unfortunately, the outcome is cruel. The Chinese bosses, determined to avoid all responsibility, decide to leave him to die at the construction site. To them, “he is one of the nameless and faceless who will slip through the cracks” (126), but Liow’s provision of his backstory arrests our empathy toward his circumstances governed by capitalistic forces, not just Singapore’s but also the traditional fixation on dowry sizes and materialistic pursuits—his brother’s “greatest dream was to own a laptop” (121)—prevalent in his hometown in India. In his last moments, these forces are as apathetic as ever, when, having decided to leave him to die, his superiors’ wanting “to kill each other not moments ago” reverts to calm whispers, as they spoke to him “as though to a baby” (126). Liow reveals to us through her story that this calmed apathy is easily achieved when a worker is but another nameless, faceless statistic whose life story is contained within his tumultuous mind and kept unbeknownst to us.
Allusions to this Singaporean state of apathy toward the marginalized also exist in works of poetry and non-fictional articles/commentaries. Consider the following lines from Alfian Sa’at’s poem ‘Apathy’:
Numb does not describe us,
We have nothing left to offer for thawing.
We still fly our kites
In designated parks. (Alfian 54)
Alfian intersperses his thoughts on the state of apathy in Singaporeans with their daily activities, showing that this apathy exists alongside our everyday ways of life as a semi-permanent condition. This apathy in particular is directed towards the “strikes” and “conspiracies” of “disheveled men” (54), revealing our ignorance and removal from whatever conspiratorial cause these people are fighting for. The poem concludes with the following:
We sleep on headlines
Plumped like pillows,
Stuffed with cotton;
Plucked by the hands
Of the silent and dying,
From the gaping mouths
Of the silenced and the dead. (55)
Alfian shows that this removal from the pressing issues being revolted against is due to our own unwillingness to rise from our comfortable situations. By showing how this pillow, symbolizing our comfort, is made by the hands “of the silent and dying,” we are rudely reminded that many of these repressed individuals are the ones who help facilitate the comforts of our everyday life. Alfian’s usage of cotton intensifies the metaphor by associating it with the image of American slavery, thus implying that our ignorance and apathy toward these invisible sufferers is akin to such a slavery. This apathy toward situations that seemingly do not affect our own livelihoods is expounded upon in Yeoh’s article on moral panic and public policy, which states how “it should not be surprising” that the average voter would be against implementing a minimum wage, since “only very low-wage workers would benefit from [it]” (Yeoh). This apathy toward the need for change is repeated in other policies that would benefit only minority groups, such as “the repeal of Section 377A, or allowing e-cigarettes,” neither of which positively affect the status quo. Yeoh adds that “when the public is passive towards the status quo, or is apathetic over proposed alternatives, the state seldom feels the need to amend this status quo,” as these issues “do not upset average or neutral Singaporeans” (Yeoh). This brings us back to one of the very first points of this paper: that when such ideologies favoring the majority and excluding the minority are officiated by bureaucracy, they become normalized in our society, rendering everything incongruent to this status quo abnormal, or atypical. Through Yeoh’s article, we see that this is, in fact, a two-way street, and that the majority opinion will always sway the state to keep public policy in favor of this majority. Such is the reality of the self-centeredness that permeates mainstream society. There are many other works of Singapore literature that deal with the mistreatment and, indeed, non-treatment of the marginalized, but these two examples, as well as Yeoh’s article, adequately reveal to us the innate lack of empathy that results in the silencing, and ultimately death, of those who exist outside state-perpetuated social norms.
5. Conclusion
Such is the state of a nation whose citizens’ main discourse toward the unfamiliar and the atypical is that of indifference and non-kindness. From these examples, it seems apparent that apathy, engaged both ways, results in the fragmented margins of society depicted in MoMP. While the revelations of moral panic and the resultant apathy exhibited externally and internally in her book’s characters is clear, Koe seems to also be using MoMP as a sort of anti-denial movement to stir up the intentional apathy formed from the majority’s choice to remain in denial. Cohen reflects that such a movement asserts that this “denial—cover-up, evasion, normalization, turning a blind eye, tolerance, and so on—of certain social conditions, events and behaviours is morally wrong and politically irrational” (Cohen 241), these “social conditions” being the injustices and repression that befall the atypical characters whom Koe champions. Using MoMP for such a movement might thus bear similarity to the fighting fire with fire approach discussed earlier. Koe even uses the revered symbols of Singapore as her tools to expose these fault lines in our society. In ‘Siren’, she intersperses the narrative with a mythologized backstory of its controversial half-mermaid character Marl, drawing similarities to the mythological tale of the Merlion and Sang Nila Utama’s founding of Singapore, thereby seemingly subverting Singapore’s national mascot, and calling it out for the freak of nature that it theoretically is—a fish and lion hybrid. If sterilized technicalities are such an important part of the structure that make up Singapore's refined society, then looking at the Merlion as what it technically is ironic, given the interspecies taboo it technically represents. Yet, this utilization of the Merlion doesn’t seem to come out of blind angst; in the story, Marl, who is mistreated by his peers growing up, eventually learns to accept himself for who he is, and in the process is accepted, understood, and even embraced by the story’s first-person narrator, who had also bullied him as a youth. Here, the nameless narrator thus represents the reader, showing us how perspectives and prejudices can be changed so long as one reaches out and seeks to understand others better. In the story’s case, Marl’s inter-speciesism and his endured discrimination is a clear metaphor for the challenges faced by transsexuals, whose existences remain a traditionally taboo subject in Singapore. Certainly, tradition itself is not a thing to be shamed; it is tradition that helps us maintain our cultural identity. However, a tradition of repression, even and especially one that is bureaucratized and normalized, should never be allowed to persist, not just for those at the losing end of these social norms, but also for those who make up the majority of society. Allowing ourselves to lack a deeper empathy will only result in an endless spin-cycle of apathy that accelerates until we lose all sight and regard for others. Koe herself believes that MoMP’s stories attempt to address not only this “fundamental incompatibility of bureaucracy in relation to empathy,” but also the “dilemmas large and small outside the maudlin scope of morality/immorality” (Koe). Indeed, these dilemmas encapsulate not just her characters’ experiences, but also frame our way of thinking as outsiders peering into these private lives, educating ourselves on the true extent of our society’s plurality and examining how we may embrace it, even when it might not agree with us. In the final lines of ‘The Ballad of Arlene & Nelly’, MoMP’s closing story, the following is recited:
The deaths—tiny ones, false ones, real ones—we undertake in the name of love are the closest that we ever come to greatness. (Koe 204)
In concluding her short story collection, Koe suggests that in the face of self-centeredness, conceit, discrimination, insecurity, and most overwhelmingly, apathy, it is these sacrifices that make us great. To choose compassion, to die to the self, and to practice genuine empathy is how we might propel our nation to a truer greatness outshining any kind of capitalistic, materialistic, and measurable quality that we hold on to so dearly, but would do so much better to simply set aside for the sake of those who are unseen, unrecognized, and rendered stateless in their hopes to lead honest, unwary lives.
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Ho Kin Yunn is a Singaporean writer whose work appears in Singapore Unbound, Cha, and several anthologies. He has a BA (Hons) in English and Film from the Singapore University of Social Sciences (2020).
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