The Polemical Rhetoric of Jack Neo’s Ah Boys to Men and Repertoires of Filmic Masculinity as Sacrifice in Singapore

ABSTRACT

In Singapore, a strict policy of male conscription or national service (hereafter, NS) that transforms boys into men is carefully calibrated to maintain support from the civilian sector. I argue that, in the widely acclaimed Ah Boys to Men film series directed by Jack Neo, cinematic scripts of military masculinities are inflected by class and ethnicity. While Neo’s film series does not depart from the realities of everyday multiculturalism in Singapore as celebratory, the film is a rhetorical resource of the patriarchal state, albeit one that lacks finesse, which prepares teenage males for their indelible rites of passage into manhood. The film represents the symbolic power of the state in communicating the necessity of conscription as a proving ground of masculinity. In counteracting rhetorical fears of training fatalities and injuries to disarm questions about the relevance of male conscription, the state is careful not to undermine its militarised ambitions. Instead, it deploys curious narratives of masculinised sacrifice to propagate ideological control of the citizenry.

KEYWORDS:

• Ah Boys to Men
• Singapore Armed Forces
• national service
• masculinities
• conscription

Acknowledgements

In addition to the anonymous reviewers, the author expresses his appreciation to the editor-in-chief and the regional editor, Robbie Peters, for their constructive feedback.

Notes

1. After a sudden diagnosis of advanced cancer in January 2020, the Chambers of the Attorney-General granted Lee’s company commander, Captain BS Tan, a discharge from all criminal charges that did not amount to an acquittal. Captain Tan, 33, died on 13 February 2020. After Tan’s death, a total of six servicemen have been prosecuted under military law for abuses of authority, endangering life and disobeying general orders. For full details, see Today Online (2020).