TRIGGER WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BLOG CONTAINS CONTENT ABOUT SELF-HARM AND SUICIDE THEMES THAT MAY BE DISSTRESSING TO SOME READERS.
Starring real-life former gang members, local-born director Royston Tan’s 15 is a drama-comedy of the lives of five 15-year old gang members and how they deal with the problems in their lives.
Looked down upon by society and instantly labelled as ‘hooligans’ and even compared to a ‘monkey’, these teens suffer a common plight of living under the roof of a (verbally) abusive and negligent parents and a lack of nurturing and supportive peers (I meant not in the triad brotherhood sense). As a result they turn to the support from their gang members who would stand up and fight for and together with them when necessary.
In Singapore, the film was given a R21 film classification (see film rating guidelines in Singapore HERE) and I was slightly hesitant to watch it as I did not want just another gang show filled with Hokkien profanities, school bullies and discouraging teachers. So I was taken aback when the film goes beyond the usual theatrics to show us the struggles they face back at home from their verbally abusive parents.
Besides the regular fights, the show subtly touches on suicide (TRIGGER WARNING: There is a scene where a lady jumps off the building. We do not see her jumping but we see the impact of the fall, her face and the blood), scenes of self-harm (TRIGGER WARNING: There is a scene where a teenage male used pen-knife to cut his arms. Blood is seen oozing out.) and frequent drug usage (TRIGGER WARNING: In one scene, a male was attempting to smuggle drugs using condoms. I’m personally unaware of what was happening and do not want to know further either.). Throughout the show, the characters do talk about suicide as a means of escaping their problems and there is a very graphic depiction of the ways to die.
WHAT LEFT THE DEEPEST IMPRESSION ON ME?
There were few scenes in particular actually. The first was the park scene, Shaun and his two other friends were praying to Tua Pek Kong, a Taoist deity believed to the god of prosperity, for good grades. For Melvin Chen’s case a pass in his math test was the last straw before his parents kicked him out of the house. While their prayer did seemed a little funny as they prayed to cheat on their math test without getting caught, their little conversation they had afterwards was demoralising.
Melvin Chen started off asking his friends what their future holds beyond sparring with other gangs and they all had little to no hope aspirations. The mere thought of thinking of the future is impossible because the society they grew up in and with has successfully ingrained one definition of success – the 5 Cs. For those unfamiliar with it, the 5Cs used (oh I hope) to be a acronym for the 5 markers of ‘success’ in Singapore, namely careers, condos, country clubs, credit cards, and cars. And in 15, we see the boys accepting their fate and treating life as a death sentence at the mere age of 15 and that should not be the case.
The second scene was just the birthday cake Vynn prepared for Melvin. His parents have clearly forgotten his birthday again despite his mom’s attempt to “make a feast” for him. But clearly, the failing of his math test stood out more to them than their son’s birthday. Melvin later then broke down and promised to smoke his last cigarette when his broke friend was Vynn gave him a birthday cake.
The third scene was when Armani was finding buildings to jump off from. Insisting on finding the perfect building to jump off from, Armani went through almost the whole of Singapore to find buildings only to reject all of them citing reasons like “all grey, so boring”, “too high class for my [socio-economic status]”, and also expressing shock at how The Little Guilin looks like. Other iconic scenery of Singapore such as the collapsed Nicoll Highway bridge, the ‘destroyed’ Chinatown buildings, the breakdown of the Bukit Panjang LRT were mentioned (or mocked).
Armani eventually settled on Esplanade Theatres, an iconic landmark in Singapore which signifies the arts scene here, to die from. A symbolic death of the local arts scene? Put together, director Royston Tan seems to be telling us that despite having many ‘opportunities’ as represented by the new Changi Airport building, MRT train system, HDB buildings and others, Singapore still does not have enough opportunities for everyone. The arts scene is ‘dead’ and even our nature, represented by The Little Guilin, was met with poor reception.
Lastly, I would like to point out that the film does an incredible job of illustrating the idea that not all gangsters have tattoos, dyed hair, piercings and speak vulgarities. And not all those who have tattoos, dyed hair, piercings and speak vulgarities are gangsters. As seen in the coffee shop fight scene, the group of secondary school boys in white uniforms technically started the fight first by spitting at the cat. It was unclear whether these boys were part of a gang but that should not matter as they did beat up Shaun and Erick in the tunnel.
The question is then why these boys are not given the same treatment the ‘gangsters’ have? Is it because they look like a model student? Because they have better grades? Or because they speak better English? With English used as a medium of instruction, it is no wonder that those who have better English proficiency have higher chances of performing better in schoolwork than those who don’t. But language is something that needs to be used regularly for one to get better in. With absent parents and parents that speak dialect at home, how can these kids be expected to improve their English? And this also raises another question of ‘trading’ mother tongue languages for proficiency in English. (Read more about Singapore’s bilingual education policy HERE)
Overall, 15 is actually quite enjoyable and better than expected. The stories are very loosely connected and there does not seem to be any major plot underlying them. Some scenes were quite funny (largely because I understood the Singlish and Mandarin spoken), example the part where they talked about needing to keep up with trends when making the pornography site. It is a film for mature viewers certainly and one that makes you reflect on how we treat and view people ‘different’ from us, our markers of ‘success’ and how everyone in the society as a whole needs to be willing to accept and embrace differences and has a role to bridge these differences.
Watch Royston Tan’s 15 (2003) HERE.
Cinematic Frame of Mind 