Seminar IV (Five Bags of Rice)

Week 7 (21/2/12)

Overall, I felt that today's group was not really substantial because at the end of the seminar, I don't really know what is the main themes. What I do know is that it speaks about communism. What was interesting is how they draw back to today's Singapore context that the play has represented.

Five Bags of Rice is set in the 1950s where wars and colonism took place in most parts of world. There were alot of propaganda and brainwashing of ideologies in China because of this man Mao Ze Dong. The world lived in fear, especially the chinese people in China.This play is portray racial and religious stereotypes, suspicion and simplification of others. The conflict and suspicion brought about tensions within the characters and pushes action and resistance against one another.

Communism is the ideology of a particular social organization that holds all property in common. It was not meant for politics initially. There is this idea os free society with no division and of same standards. This ideology is actually not a bad idea but many people defamed this word 'communism' because of the leaders controlling it. Let's face it, the world is corrupt, everyone is corrupt to some extent. And for communism to work out, there has to be no corruption and no hierarchical system of power and wealth. Is that even possible? Everyone wants to climb high.

The next question raised against communism is, if people were given the same amount no matter how hard they work, wouldn't they just slack and not do any work and expect the same amount of pay? I feel that communism promotes laziness and hinders national progress.

In this Five Bags of Rice, Rose and Chit Wah were communists within the British colony in Malaya. Kocher brought out the significance of gender roles in his play, where Rose joins the communist party and killed Ali just to obtain those bags of rice. Rose was brutal, committed and strong in her decisions. Ismail share the same dreams as Rose but was afraid of standing up for himself. It is interesting how women were portrayed as strong and decisive in this play rather than the men, and the fact the Rose killed a man gives a very strong signal of what woman is capable of.

Kocher also brought up family relationships into the play where Rose was exposed and indirectly killed by her own mother. Her mother loved her alot and was the one who spoke about communist ideas to Rose. It is contradictory that her mother first instill in her the values of a communist and refuse to think that it was her fault when Rose became a communist. Shouldn't she be happy? Although her mother did the 'correct' thing to expose Rose, but it is still immoral to not blame herself for raising the child up like that.
This play reminds me of Spring Awakening where in the beginning, the mother of Wendla told Wendla that the only way to conceive a child is to love a man very much. She did not tell Wendla about sex education. Wendla then went to have sex with Melchior and was pregnant. Not only did her mother blame herself for not educating her, she slapped Wendla's face and made her abort the child, in the end killed her. This is the same concept in the Five Bags of Rice. The way that parents raise a child is very important because without proper guidance, the child will become wild.

CK then brought up a few questions for us to ponder:
Is it fair/right to think Singapore as a Chinese country within Islamic ocean?
Singapore shouldn't be called a chinese country because it has quite a percentage of Malays and other races. Moreover, Singapore promotes Multi-racial society so much, why should it be called a chinese country?

Should Terrorist (national and political e.g. Tamil Tigers) allowed to rule Singapore?