BBC: A Chinese box office hit sparks a debate about identity in Singapore

[supreme]

If the Speak Mandarin campaign has succeeded after 47 years, why fear dialect movies? Gen Z's and younger no longer speak any dialect. Dialect movies are for the elderly and boomer aunties and uncles who don't have any impact on the Mandarin-speaking scene.

If the Speak Mandarin campaign has failed after 47 years, then #1 time for a revamp or scrap it altogether, #2 a Teochew movie is not going to get all the young people speaking Teochew again.

Either way, no reason to ban dialect shows. No-brainer really.

Taiwan's strong Minnan (Hokkien) tradition has not diluted their proficiency in Mandarin or their command of Chinese. In fact, all Taiwanese high school students learn wen yan wen (Classical Chinese), which is only taught at university level on the Chinese mainland.

Actually it is nothing about dialects. Its control. U see taiwan Hk malaysia and even Thailand. Dialects like hokkien hakka teochew Cantonese flourished and people are more independent minded and gutsy. Real culture and roots. Compared that to local crap media corpse tv series and movies. Totally bland and a failure. Just look at media corpse tv series and jack shit movies. Really disgraceful and childish. Reflects on the viewers and society.

 

[syed putra]

Yes CECAs can have Hindu movies with no restrictions. PAP KNNBCCB.

Indians are not easily fooled by lky iike Chinese.

 

[syed putra]

In Thailand, the show in teo chew or dubbed in Thai? They have more teo chews than anyone else.

 

[A Singaporean]

scared mah

These associations are as useful as tits on a boar.

 

[superpower]

Actually it is nothing about dialects. Its control. U see taiwan Hk malaysia and even Thailand. Dialects like hokkien hakka teochew Cantonese flourished and people are more independent minded and gutsy. Real culture and roots. Compared that to local crap media corpse tv series and movies. Totally bland and a failure. Just look at media corpse tv series and jack shit movies. Really disgraceful and childish. Reflects on the viewers and society.

Agree. Purely political.

#1 LKY was afraid of independent centres of power forming around dialect clans, undermining loyalty to a central PAP authority. He saw how powerful communal loyalties could be when BS swept the elections in 1963.

#2 The PAP was afraid that opposition candidates fluent in dialects would beat their own largely English-ed technocrats to win over constituencies with huge numbers of dialect speaking voters. LTK winning Hougang in 1991 with powerful rally speeches in Teochew comes to mind.

 

[superpower]

This is a low budget Flix. The Tiong movie industry is going through douldrum currently. Movie with mega cast is faultering.

You don't need a mega-cast if you have a good script, good director and competent actors. Many of the 'low budget' Chinese movies still stand head and shoulders above the crap that Jack Neo dishes out every year.