Liberating Women’s Bodies in Postcolonial Singapore

Famously known as Singapore’s first R-rated play, Chin Woon Ping’s Details Cannot Body Wants is a feminist post-colonial play from Singapore. It does not follow any linear plot structure within conventional Western literary techniques. It has four distinct sections titled “Details,” “Cannot,” “Body,” and “Wants.” The story is told by one woman in poetic and musical forms, accompanied by a chorus and movement. The individual Woman is less a character and more a postcolonial subject that has multiple identity categories within it—female, woman, Chinese, Malaysian, Singaporean, and much more. Each section highlights the role women play within a culturally diverse, patriarchal, and post-colonial society. This paper argues that Chin deploys language, body, and gender as comedic weapons used to resist the British colonial legacy of dominant patriarchal standards and expectations for women in post-colonial Singapore. This paper first explains Singapore’s colonial history, followed by the author’s cultural history and lineage. This paper will then begin the analysis of the play by discussing three pain points. Firstly, the usage of Singlish, which is a Singaporeanized version of English, within the play. Secondly, the exploration of the female body to challenge patriarchal beauty and behavioural standards. Lastly, the unnamed Woman steps into the role of a typical man to expose and dismantle the male gaze. 

Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia near Malaysia and Indonesia. Singapore’s history as a nation is rich in cultural overlap. It was first part of the Sumatran empire, during which the country was called Temasek (Ho). After the fall of Temasek, it was called Malacca, and eventually, Singapura, also known as the Lion City (Ho). While the British were on the lookout for another trading location for their East India Company, they found Singapore in the early 1800s (Ho). As part of an agreement with the Dutch, Singapore was sold to the British as payment, and the city became the capital of the East India Company (Ho). During World War 2, Singapore fell under Japanese occupation, until the victory of the British (Ho). In 1959, Singapore became a self-governing state separate from Malaya, and in 1965, it became a wholly independent nation (Ho). The ethnic population of Singapore is majority Chinese, despite being a Southeast Asian nation. Malay and Indians are the next largest cultural and racial groups. And so, Singapore has four national languages representing the three major cultural groups mentioned, and English as a colonial remnant. 

Chin Woon Ping, the author of the play Details Cannot Body Wants was born in Malaya during the British occupation (Gilbert 273). She went to university in Malaysia, Singapore, China, and Indonesia, and currently teaches at Dartmouth in the United States (“Woon-Ping Chin”). Her ancestry is part of a long lineage of Chinese-Malay intermarriages resulting in a unique racial and cultural identity (Gilbert 273). Her lived experience in Singapore, throughout the historic changes in occupation and independence, and her ancestral inheritance of cultural ambiguity creates a common theme of identity, culture, history, and purpose within her work. This is evident in Details Cannot Body Wants as well. Inspired by the feminist movement in North America, Chin wrote this play to interrogate issues of sexuality, gender expression, physicality, and stereotypes within post-colonial Singapore (Gilbert 273). Because of the content and the production of the play, and because it was considered an “ideological piece,” this was rated as an R-rated production only to be watched by adults over the age of 18 in Singapore (Ahmad).  

Chin uses cultural language as a disruptive strategy to resist colonial remnants and the influence of language and structure. The English language in Singapore is both a colonial remnant and also a cultural asset. Singlish (i.e. Singaporean English), is the main language or patois used for English based Singaporean plays because it is “typified by colourful dialectal intrusions, polyglottal references, and syntactic syncretisms that are distinctly Singaporean in their cultural plurality” (Seet 306). For example, the lines “Why you no shame?” or “Cannot do this, cannot do that, so frustrating one!” are examples of Singlish in action within the play (Chin 277-8). The omission of words like ‘do’ and ‘have’ in the “Why you no shame?” line is what makes it Singlish rather than proper English. Similarly, the ‘one’ at the end of “so frustrating one!” is what makes the line Singlish. ‘One’ here does not refer to a number or an individual, rather, it is just a complementary expression used at the end of phrases to express a certain emotion like frustration in this instance. The overt grammatical errors within the English language is used to create a unique Singaporean language that only locals familiar with its usage would be able to understand. It is a comedic strategy because an unfamiliar audience will laugh at its incorrectness, but it is also a subversion of the colonial language since it is actively removing and adding words to suit the individual Singaporean needs, rather than what the language structures were intended for. Singlish is typically used and viewed as lower in class, or uneducated version of English. The usage of this language on a stage presents an alternate discourse because a colonial language was taken and transformed into a melting pot of the different cultures that have inhabited Singapore. Moreover, this language, which was typically associated with the lower classes, is now used within the artistic realm, elevating its significance and reach. In these two ways, the use of Singlish within the play serves to counter the dominant discourse of elite language and communication within Singapore, which is a colonial legacy. 

Chin deploys the female body as a rebellious strategy against patriarchal standards and racist stereotypes of Asian women. At the beginning of the play, the Woman says that she gained weight and now has to deal with the “tyranny of the sag” (Chin 276). The use of the word ‘tyranny’ is significant because it suggests that the authority that beauty standards which were influenced by colonial ideals have over her and over women, in general, is tyrannical. The sag is given agency and power over how the Woman sees herself and sees other women as well, and this power is fuelled by unrealistic British standards due to colonisation, and Chinese standards since it is the majority ethnic population. The Woman also needs to “sing in the voice that fitted my shame” (277). Shame is used to build someone’s reputation and character, and whichever voice the Woman uses, must fit. A moral weapon, shame, is given the individuality and importance of a body. This is a method to criticise the socialisation processes of young girls when they are taught to have soft, high pitched voices to appear weak in front of a man’s voice. During the chorus chant in the “Cannot” section of the play, the chorus performs “motions of copulations” during the line “cannot hump,” and starts “scratching groin” during the line “cannot scratch” (278-9). The slapstick use of the body and focusing on the lower regions of the body is evident here. The sight of a chorus chanting and performing socially inappropriate actions in public is funny. But, the actions that the chorus performs are typically associated with men. The chorus is made up of two men and two women, and so, by having both men and women perform these actions, the physicality of sex and lower bodily regions are associated with both genders. This is a method of resisting the dominant patriarchal standard that women are supposed to be pure and untouched, whereas men can be actively involved in bodily pleasures without shame. 

Lastly, Chin supplants the Woman in the role of a man to challenge the male gaze and desire that objectifies women. At the end of the “Details” section, the Woman puts on make-up where one side is like a Chinese opera heroine, and the other side is like a Chinese male warrior. In the “Cannot” section, the Woman enacts a scene of a man and woman interacting with each other, represented by the two halves of her face and the make-up. This scene depicts the man as a creepy older figure that sees the woman as a “doll” that he wants to play with. When she acts as the male character, she uses a “deep, husky voice,” whereas when she is playing the female character, she uses a “docile, ‘oriental’ voice and posture” (Chin 278). The exaggerated double make-up and the stark difference in voice is carnivalesque in humour. The dramatic differences between the gender portrayals by one person is comedic. By seeing a singular unnamed Woman protagonist/narrator portray the two genders, “the audience are made to reconsider their perspective on gender,” which is common in Singaporean English based theatre (Keet 308). This is part of the “disrupting the gaze” strategy used by feminist authors and actors in Singapore (Keet 308). Neither the female character nor the male character played by the Woman is accurate in its representation of either gender as a whole, however, they both embody stereotypes and societal expectations. Asian women are both stereotyped and expected to be small, demure, and weak in front of a man. They must appear controllable and fetishizable due to their ‘orientalism.’ This way, Chin is critiquing the colonial remnants of fetishization and weakening of the woman’s character and individuality. 

Language, body, and gender expression are used as tools to disrupt standards of communication and resist the persistence of colonial and patriarchal expectations. Chin uses Singlish as a way to uplift a unique Singaporean creation that took a colonial authority and transformed it into a cultural asset. She critiques the stringent beauty standards set out by the British legacy and the dominant Chinese population in Singapore. The expectations of how women as a gender should behave and react are dangerous and unrealistic, which are exposed through dramatic costume and voice. Together, Chin presents a comedic disruption and feminist critique of dominant standards set out for women which are inspired and upheld by the colonial legacy, in post-colonial Singapore. 

Disclaimer: This work is original and the property of Aroni Sarkar. It is not authorised for any use, copies or dissemination.

Works Cited

Ahmad, Nureza. “The First R-Rated Play.” Singapore Infopedia, 

https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_53_2005-02-02.html. Accessed 8 December 2021.

Chin, Woon Ping. “Details Cannot Body Wants.” Postcolonial Plays: an Anthology, edited by Helen Gilbert. Routledge, 2001, 276-285.

Gilbert, Helen. “Chin Woon Ping.” Postcolonial Plays: an Anthology, edited by Helen Gilbert. Routledge, 2001, 273-275.  

Ho, Robert. “Singapore.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Singapore. Accessed 8 December 2021. 

Keet, S.S. “Discourse from the Margin: A Triptych of Negotiations in Contemporary Singapore English-Language Theatre.” World Literature Today, vol. 74, no. 2, 2000, pp 305-312.  

“Woon Ping Chin.” Dartmouth Department of Theatre, https://theater.dartmouth.edu/people/woon-ping-chin. Accessed 9 December 2021.