Thinking Aloud

I did the post on the Miss Singapore – World 2009 contestant not speaking terrifically good English in a bit of a rush the other day, but wasn’t intending to add to it. But there’s been a couple of news articles in National Media since that led me to think further on it. For instance, The Straits Times ran an article on Sunday, and reposted here, with snippet below and formatted to save space:

All it took was a handful of words uttered by a 19-year-old beauty queen in a video interview.

But they have triggered a storm of online debate, complete with hand-wringing over Singapore’s education system, the state of intelligence of today’s youth and whether the use of Singlish in popular culture has gone too far.

The words mispronounced by Ms Ris Low, winner of Miss Singapore World 2009, included ‘preens’, ‘rad’, ‘pis’, ‘bigini’ and ‘boomz’. These mispronunciations of prints, red, piece, bikini and the infamous use of the sound effect ‘booms’ as a made-up word, boomz, to describe a dazzling outfit, have resulted in outpourings of scorn from Singapore netizens.

And The New Paper also had an article on it on THURS, formatted also to save space:

YOU might have seen the online video making its rounds. It’s no sex tape, but nevertheless this seemingly innocuous question-and-answer session with a beauty queen has generated an online buzz.

The video is a Razor TV interview of Miss Singapore World 2009, Ris Low, 19, which was put on its website prior to her win on 31 Jul. In it, she responded to questions fielded by the reporter about her style and dress sense.

Originally posted on 8 Jul, the video is still much circulated and watched. On the Razor TV website alone, it’s garnered over 16,000 views. It’s also made its way to video-sharing site YouTube, while links can be found on posts on social networking site Facebook and online forums like Hardwarezone.

What’s the big deal? Well, nasty comments on this local beauty queen’s diction – or lack of it – have been flying fast and furious. Netizens’ comments have been overwhelmingly negative.

To begin, I think a lot of the recent derisive comments posted about the contestant have quite gone overboard. There are allegations of hanky-panky in her sweeping the many awards in the local round of the contest, and some of those accusations are of a sordid nature which I won’t echo here. Those comments are outright malicious and unnecessary. The lass seems to be bearing up well-enough though, if The New Paper article is to be believed.

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Putting that aside now and looking at the issues raised and the defense put up by proponents of Speak Good English activities here and also organizers of the local segment of the contest though, I think in several spots they’ve completely missed the point.

For instance, the head secretariat of the Speak Good English Movement says:

“Lots of Singaporeans speak this way. She is not unusual.”

I’m thinking of persons of Ms. Low’s age whom I’m associated daily with – i.e. my students – and asking myself do they really speak like her. Maybe it’s the pressure of the spot light and the camera, but I just can’t think of students around me who slur their pronunciation the same way, or are completely incoherent when asked for their opinions on things they’re familiar with.

But where the head secretariat’s argument fails is in its logic. Let’s go with the statement that lots of Singaporeans do speak this way. But aren’t the Miss World contestants supposed to display exceptional, or at least above normal, traits and skills? If a beauty contestant is ‘usual’ and displays no extra-normal traits beyond the ordinary, then it speaks volumes about the quality of the contest.

Then there’s also the events director Ms. Lee defending Ms. Low:

“This is a beauty contest where beauty is most important. This is not a test of oratorical speech or a debating contest.”

This gets into the whole thing about what exactly constitutes “beauty.” OK, so physical beauty is the type most obviously represented as these contests ago, followed by (I’m supposing) other types. While the contest may not be a test of speaking or argumentative skills, Ms. Lee’s defense above states that in this day and age, physical beauty in these contests is more important than everything else – which may be indeed still the case now, but it certainly doesn’t do anything to help perceptions that contests then are little more than flesh parades.

There’s also the issue of what is a minimally-acceptable standard in these ‘lesser’ skills in these contests. I think many Singaporeans are horrified not merely because Ms. Low doesn’t speak good English. The perceptions (from what I’ve read) is that the little video segment see her speaking poor English. And there’s a long drop from ‘good’ to ‘poor’ English.

The event director’s statement wasn’t unexpected though. After all, to say or even hint “Er, yeah we did foul up. We think Miss Singapore – World should had displayed a little more (fill in your blanks)…” is to undermine the event and tantamount to saying that the assessment criteria to selection of the Singapore winner has failed.

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And finally, let’s put aside all the issues of language and look only at the content of what Ms. Low said. A good portion of the online comments are centered on her fashion sense and personal attitudes. Fashion I can’t comment – Ling will readily attest to the fact that I have no fashion sense… there’s a old-worn and faded polo-shirt I’ve been wearing for 10 years now, and she secretly plans to destroy it cotton fiber by fiber when I’m not looking. But lots of flak have been heaped on Ms. Low’s ‘me’ utterances in the video segment.

Ok, so maybe many 19 year olds haven’t yet come to an age where they can think beyond ‘me’ if you go with Ms. Low’s online defendants, or at least display more range in video-taped segments. But then again, one purported activity that the Beauty winner and Queen of these pageants do is humanitarian work, and I’m guessing that Miss World this year will be doing the same. It seems pretty incongruous to see the Miss Singapore – World spouting it’s “all about me”, and send her to a pageant where the winner is going to do stuff that’s well beyond ‘me’.  I think if character attitudes is of any bearing in the judging criteria and Ms. Low is being just honest in her interview, Singapore then has pretty much torpedoed any chance of winning the final contest.

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To be fair, I think Ms. Low is also just unlucky. I’m hoping that the Razor TV segment which sparked the onslaught is the worst example, a singular instance, and that she really does speak better normally and is a little more percepive beyond herself. At least when it comes to being in front of camera anyway. Truth to tell, part of me feels a little sorry for her – it’s not the criticism (which I think is at least partially justified), but the unwarranted accusations of her winning the Singapore leg underhandedly.

There’s plenty of time from now till December when the final contest runs. Here’s to hoping things will improve.