By Simon Vincent

It was reported in The Straits Times on Sept. 20, 2014, that Yale-NUS was granted special permission by the Media Development Authority to screen the banned film, To Singapore, With Love, as part of one if its modules.

However, this permission is nothing special nor new:

As the film-maker explained on Facebook, MDA has all along made the exception for institutes of higher learning to screen films that are banned or with R21 ratings as long as it is part of a class' syllabus.

Which leads to this conclusion: So, apparently, the film will not undermine national security if it is screened in a university setting “for classroom teaching and discussion only”?

No film to watch anyways

Sadly, our university students, like the rest of “ordinary” Singaporeans, will ultimately still not be able to watch the banned film, despite the MDA’s permission.

One reason is because Yale-NUS had gotten ahead of itself and neglected to get permission from the filmmaker first.

And the other reason, which is the real reason why the film will never be shown in Singapore, is because the filmmaker has taken a firm but principled stance that a ban on her work is a ban and will not afford MDA any wiggle room.

As one blogger pointed out, a university campaign to get a banned film screened actually “plays straight into the MDA’s hands” as the MDA can insist that there is no ban in place because, hey, you can watch it in university.

By placating academics and giving them piecemeal concessions of freedom, the MDA deflates the pressure it faces to allow public screenings of films it objects to.

My own objections

When I was in one of these “institutes of higher learning,” I had enjoyed this “special permission.” I was allowed to watch and discuss the banned Last Temptation of Christ simply because I was studying in NUS (the non-Yale-affiliated one) and enrolled in a module called Religion and Film.

The MDA said it “recognises that lecturers and students of media or related courses at tertiary institutions may require access to a wider variety of films, including films that are classified R21 or NAR.”

What makes a tertiary student or a lecturer so special that he or she should be given access to a wider variety of films, denied to everyone else?

The MDA has not only classified To Singapore, With Love as Not Allowed for All Ratings (NAR), but also said that the artistic merits of the film are irrelevant to its ruling.

Are we to assume, then, that the MDA thinks only university students can discern these “artistic merits” without threatening our national security(for the sake of argument, let’s just pretend the national security rationale makes sense)?

One of the take-away messages of PM Lee’s National Day Rally Speech this year was a de-emphasis on university education as the only viable career path in Singapore. Technical and applied education are to be given greater emphasis than before. Such a shift would be an admirable one if it is successful and prevents the elitist underpinnings of our current university-centric education.

We should recognise, however, that “open inquiry” -- which Yale-NUS President Pericles Lewis sees as a bedrock principle -- is applicable not only to university students. You should very well be able to watch and discuss films like The Last Temptation of Christ and To Singapore, With Love whether you are in a technical college, in a university or in no education institution at all.

Until the principle of open inquiry is extended to everyone, regardless of his or her education, what it is essentially saying is that only university-educated Singaporeans meet the mark to watch certain -- let’s say iconoclastic -- films and come to their own conclusions.

If the MDA were to treat everyone as discerning individuals, though, we might not need it and its censorship at all. Now that would be truly iconoclastic.

Photo of students from Yale-NUS website.

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