Holy shit, every time I'm reminded of this book and film franchise just everything about it just fills me with absolute white-hot hate. I feel like someone superglued They Live sunglasses to my head; every single person involved in writing, filming and promoting of this filth, and their circle of family and friends, gets cultural revolutioned the moment I find a way to resurrect Mao.
:agony-limitless:
There are people who are aware about the film's (completely unintentional, I think) subtext, but they aren't the people who made and promoted the film, and they certainly aren't the people who liked the film and the books.
In the scene immediately after the Jeep scene, they show the male lead character and his friends visiting a hawker centre, to establish how they are just normal people with down-to-earth tastes despite their upper-class backgrounds.
But even then they can't completely hide their classism, because they just had to make sure that you know that these street hawker stalls are the only ones in the world that earn Michelin stars. Well you KNOW it's good since some European assholes tell you it is to virtue-signal about how their value judgments aren't about solely profits and prestige but about real culinary quality.
All the while, the male lead and his friends all speak in this super proper plummy Received Pronounciation. Yeah fucker we know you went to Eton and read PPE at Oxford and got called to the nonce bar, you really don't have to keep reminding us.
Also, most Singaporean hawker food is dogshit designed to scam clueless expats. I once got served a plate of chicken rice with GREEN rice.
They cooked the rice with pandan leaf. There was nothing wrong with the rice.
Most hawker's are struggling under increased privatization. https://www.reuters.com/article/singapore-food-socialenterprise-idUKL8N1Z73X1 That characterization is completely detached from reality.
The conventional ingredients for chicken rice are chicken fat, ginger and onions. Pandan leaf, as I understand it, is optional for chicken rice and is actually more in the territory of nasi lemak, and even then you'll only get rice with visible green colouration if you literally ground up the pandan leaves and drizzle the extracted juice into the rice (which is not normally done because to get the pandan fragrance in the rice you just need to cook the rice with a few knotted-up pandan leaves in the cooker). Conventional chicken rice is white or golden yellow, even if it's cooked with pandan leaf; it's not normal for chicken rice to have green rice (unless it is some sort of experimental cuisine restaurant, but then I wouldn't know anything about that).
***Edit: Also I stand by my position on Singaporean hawker food. In fact, I would expand my statement to say that the entire Singaporean nation state is just a long-term scheme to do anything it takes to extract money from white people who think that other Southeast Asian countries are too dirty / ghetto for their tastes. Due to Singapore's material conditions (small island nation with no capability for agricultural or resource extraction), its government took the route of marketing it as a safe, preferred and sanitised destination for Western capital and tourists, and I don't think that hawker centres being privatised detracts from that.
This is extremely common in Malay cooking. If the stall holder was Peranakan or Malay they're probably using the same rice for other dishes. If you want 100% pure chicken stock chicken rice go find a stall with a Michelin star or something.
Not wrong, but those of us living here on the ground just trying to get by are just as exploited by the capitalists as everyone else is. That's why I'm saying it's not fair to characterize my entire country's food culture so uncharitably. Unless you're some kind of Third Worldist (and if you are, good luck with the revolution I'll gladly face the wall) maybe check that privilege and don't just assume we're all in on the take? Lord knows I don't see a dime of those sweet Western capital tourist bucks I scam out of them in my day job.
Wtf no. It's not common practice in Malay cooking to drizzle pandan leaf juice into rice. The aroma is already fully incorporated into the rice without adding pandan leaf juice. Pandan extract/juice is usually used in Malay cooking for kuih-muih and pastries. I'm really worried about the state of Singaporean food if Singaporean hawkers regularly serve nasi lemak with green rice.
Bro, I'm just a humble Malaysian communist netizen carrying out my patriotic duty of dunking on Singaporean food culture. I believe that it was enshrined in the 1965 constitutional amendments that each Malaysian has the fundamental right to cyberbully at least one Singaporean per week, especially if they say something completely ignorant like "Singaporean food culture"?
I shed tears of joy upon observing that part of the holy rivalry shared between the great nations of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia continues on this very site in cyber-form.
As a pre-emptive warning, any americanoid, UK-oid, or europeanoid who has read this far must shut the fuck up and remain silent. This is not your fight.
Marx failed to consider that national food rivalries are the ultimate barrier to true solidarity and internationalism. :soviet-huff:
South East Asia takes great pride in their (version) of foods. Any youtube-video of someone cooking their food looks exactly like this comment section. It's honestly amazing, if you have no connection to either place.
i never got this wierd singaporean food culture rivalry shit, we were literally the same country until malaysia kicked us out, like how can you be mad of stealing shit when we were the same country
this country is bullshit, it doesnt really exist
I mean food culture rivalry anywhere is kinda like sports team rivalry. Like the USA didn't invent pizza yet there's New York pizza vs. Chicago deep dish pizza, etc. It's not supposed to make sense, and you're just supposed to pick a side and have fun shitting on all others.
However, Malaysian disdain for Singaporean food culture is maybe partially amplified by the brand of Singaporean hawker food culture being better / more widely marketed to Western audiences, leading to dishes common to Singapore and Malaysia being labelled in Western and Singaporean mass media as having "originated" from Singapore, even though the more "original"/"authentic"/"traditional" version of the same dish originated from Penang or KL or wherever.
Ah comrade, my mistake. Carry on then. My response was a kneejerk reply to chauvinist white people talking about things they don't understand, which was what I had you pegged as, but clearly that was my own assumptions talking and I sincerely apologize for coming out so antagonistic.
Because yah lah, Singaporean food culture is just stolen Malaysian food culture. Like the entire country, basically.
Errr.....
But seriously tho it's not that rare to get green rice, especially with nasi lemak. I don't think they dye it, it's just the pandan leaf juice getting cooked into the rice.
Malaysians :arm-R: Hating omputehs :arm-L: Singaporeans
Yeah I don't doubt that green pandan rice exists. Call my taste buds conservative, but I just can't imagine it being served as as part of hawker stall chicken rice / nasi lemak. Was really weirded out that one time years ago when I ordered chicken rice at a Singaporean hawker centre and got what seemed like a green eggs and ham interpretation of it.
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"Omputeh" is Malay language contraction / slang for "orang putih / orang puteh", literally meaning white person.
Lol. You just went backpacking through Southeast Asia and wound up in Singapore without realizing it's more expensive. Asia does not exist for the benefit of westerners.
Every HDB complex has its own hawker centre FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE BUILDING. The hawker centres in Singapore were literally built by the government to better serve communities by getting all the food carts off the streets. The food isn't dogshit either, it's fucking fantastic. YOU may have gone to a shitty tourist restaurant, but that's on you.
And yeah, green pandan rice is real and I guarantee you just ordered the wrong thing. I think you just went to a country you know nothing about, had a bad time and made a lot of uninformed judgments.
Admit you are ignorant. It's easier.
You signed up just to comment this, and to accuse me of being a backpacking westerner? Singaporean kiasu mentality at its finest. I thought Singapore has a meritocracy? :michael-laugh:
Man, I just go to Singapore for work. I don't give a fuck about the place. I've been to Malaysia way more times and it's a total dump by comparison. Have fun walking around with your religion on your ID card and discriminating against non-Malays, dipshit.
Lol you think just because I make fun of Singaporean hawker food I'm a Malaysian nationalist? :lenin-laugh:
I think you're jealous Singapore manages to have good food AND usable sidewalks without cops who regularly show up at bars to arrest all the Muslims
Shut up nerd