Nothing really surprises me anymore these days. Woke up to news of Nathan Hartono winning second place at the Sing! China singing competition broadcasted on Zhejiang television recently, which was known previously at The Voice of China, and also hundreds of comments and likes on posts that denounce the competition for robbing Hartono of his victory simply because he is not from China.
There are a few things that we can go into here, which I'd briefly mention but are less important that the not-yet-discussed matters at hand. Firstly, the nature of 'nationality' discrimination. I do think netizens are not entirely wrong about the Chinese's thin ego that might have influenced them to pick a singer born in China. However, there's more. There is also the subjective nature of whom you think is the best. I don't think any singing competition has ever picked the best as their winner - and it doesn't matter because the best is subjective and winners in this particular competition usually end up worse-off than their runner-ups and other competitors anyway - so if anyone is worried that this may affect his career, it most likely will not. I thought he was good, but probably not my pick for winner either (I also won't have picked Jiang, the official winner, and that's the whole point of bringing subjectivity up). Thirdly, it is incredibly ironic that Singaporeans are calling out a Chinese television channel for using underhand methods to defend their thin nationalistic ego... to defend a Singaporean singer and their own, equally weak, nationalistic ego. Combining that with the point of subjectivity, do we really prefer Hartono because he is better, or is it that he is 'one of us' like how Jiang is 'one of them'? What will happen if say, Jeryl Lee from Malaysia won the competition instead? What will the rhetoric then be? Cliche, but the idea that everyone has their own biases and it is good to check them from time to time is good.
Now that that is out of the way, it is time to scream at capitalism instead. I did not want to write about this issue previously, but I remembered something really important that the collect public memory of Singaporeans has forgotten. Singapore did the same thing too. In 2005. The Ang Junyang Project Superstar Controversy. As with all accusations of competitions being rigged, this one is also mostly made up of rumours with only a handful of evidence to work with. But consider this. Why else would an undergraduate leave University to join a singing competition that he may or may not get anything out of - after all, this is Singapore we are talking about, people don't just make reckless passionate pursuits like that. Moreover, there was no precedence in the local mandopop industry that promised certain fame if you join such a competition... unless you are already signed and promised a contract and album release, and even better, you are the assured champion of the competition. Ang signed to Universal Music Group shortly after the competition and released his album around the same time winner Kelvin Tan released his. I'd say that Tan's popularity throughout the competition was so strong that it simply could not have been ignored for fear of public backlash, and, well, having a visually-impaired person as a winner is good marketing.
Singing competitions are just big advertisement campaigns, not only for sponsors but especially for the singers themselves. Earlier I said some of the most successful singers from singing competitions are all 'losers' of the competitions, and I honestly think that they are just there for the exposure and hope that they will get picked up by a recording firm. Or, more likely than not, it is the other way around. Recording firms send their new artistes who are preparing to release their first albums to major singing competitions, have them exposed to audience, and hopefully boost record sales through name recognition. There are albums that come out so incredibly fast after a competition ends that it is not possible for arrangements not to have been made beforehand. If one dives into the Chinese forums on such matters, one will realise so many of these supposed everyman who claim to be small business owners, truck drivers and bar singers are actually professionally trained, big name recording firm-backed singers that are there to promote themselves for their upcoming album releases. This is not to denounce the real talent that these artistes possess, but it bothers me when people see singing competitions as purely innocent talent scouting programs that are not rigged in every way possible for the music industry to sell albums. Whenever a person of minority ethnicity joins such competitions in China, there is always so much focus on their ethnic language and 'culture' to serve as unique branding for those individual singers... who then release their albums shortly later with those exact branding on their labels. Singing competitions, like all reality TV shows, create personalities with certain characteristics and background to make these people feel unique, even though their singing styles are equally rigid and boring sometimes, so that people will remember them as 'that soulful singer of Tibetan ethnicity', or that 'pure rural voice from the mountains' or 'the free spirit of the Mongolian plains' - these are brands. Kelly Clarkson is a woman, that's a brand. Kelvin Tan is blind, that is a brand. And with the rise of SJWism things are just getting worse with Solo being gay and Wonder Woman revealed as queer and Iron Man now a black woman... these are all brands. I don't care if people don't care about big businesses exploiting neatly packeted discriminatory categories such as race, gender, sexual-preference etc. to sell their characters (yes, singing competition personas are nothing more than characters), but I wish people can at least notice it.
To round it up, there are people I know on Facebook who are triggered about Hartono being labelled as an overseas Chinese in the competition, and are using that one small detail to extrapolate into grand theories about Sino-Singapore relations that may hold some water but only as much as a shallow pond. Guess what? That's a brand.
Singing competitions are just big advertisement campaigns, not only for sponsors but especially for the singers themselves. Earlier I said some of the most successful singers from singing competitions are all 'losers' of the competitions, and I honestly think that they are just there for the exposure and hope that they will get picked up by a recording firm. Or, more likely than not, it is the other way around. Recording firms send their new artistes who are preparing to release their first albums to major singing competitions, have them exposed to audience, and hopefully boost record sales through name recognition. There are albums that come out so incredibly fast after a competition ends that it is not possible for arrangements not to have been made beforehand. If one dives into the Chinese forums on such matters, one will realise so many of these supposed everyman who claim to be small business owners, truck drivers and bar singers are actually professionally trained, big name recording firm-backed singers that are there to promote themselves for their upcoming album releases. This is not to denounce the real talent that these artistes possess, but it bothers me when people see singing competitions as purely innocent talent scouting programs that are not rigged in every way possible for the music industry to sell albums. Whenever a person of minority ethnicity joins such competitions in China, there is always so much focus on their ethnic language and 'culture' to serve as unique branding for those individual singers... who then release their albums shortly later with those exact branding on their labels. Singing competitions, like all reality TV shows, create personalities with certain characteristics and background to make these people feel unique, even though their singing styles are equally rigid and boring sometimes, so that people will remember them as 'that soulful singer of Tibetan ethnicity', or that 'pure rural voice from the mountains' or 'the free spirit of the Mongolian plains' - these are brands. Kelly Clarkson is a woman, that's a brand. Kelvin Tan is blind, that is a brand. And with the rise of SJWism things are just getting worse with Solo being gay and Wonder Woman revealed as queer and Iron Man now a black woman... these are all brands. I don't care if people don't care about big businesses exploiting neatly packeted discriminatory categories such as race, gender, sexual-preference etc. to sell their characters (yes, singing competition personas are nothing more than characters), but I wish people can at least notice it.
To round it up, there are people I know on Facebook who are triggered about Hartono being labelled as an overseas Chinese in the competition, and are using that one small detail to extrapolate into grand theories about Sino-Singapore relations that may hold some water but only as much as a shallow pond. Guess what? That's a brand.
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