|
"Disneyland with the Death Penalty" is a 4,500-word article about Singapore written by William Gibson. His first major piece of non-fiction, it was first published as the cover story〔(Cover of Wired issue 1.4 in which Disneyland with the Death Penalty originally appeared )〕 for ''Wired'' magazine's September/October 1993 issue (1.4).〔〔 The article follows Gibson's observations of the architecture, phenomenology and culture of Singapore, and the clean, bland and conformist impression the city-state conveys during his stay. Its title and central metaphor—Singapore as Disneyland with the death penalty—is a reference to the authoritarian artifice the author perceives the city-state to be. Singapore, Gibson details, is lacking any sense of creativity or authenticity, absent of any indication of its history or underground culture. He finds the government to be pervasive, corporatist and technocratic, and the judicial system rigid and draconian. Singaporeans are characterized as consumerists of insipid taste. The article is accentuated by local news reports of criminal trials by which the author illustrates his observations, and bracketed by contrasting descriptions of the Southeast Asian airports he arrives and leaves by. Though Gibson's first major piece of non-fiction, the article had an immediate and lasting impact. The Singaporean government banned ''Wired'' upon the publication of the issue, and the phrase "Disneyland with the death penalty" became a byword for bland authoritarianism that the city-state could not easily discard. == Synopsis == The title "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" refers to the subject of the article, the Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore, whose strictly-guarded sterility Gibson describes with horror.〔 After opening the article with the Disneyland metaphor, Gibson cites an observation attributed to Laurie Anderson that virtual reality "would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it" in relation to the immaculate state of the Changi Airtropolis, Singapore's international airport. Beyond the airport, he notes that the natural environment has been cultivated into "all-too-perfect examples of itself," such as with the abundance of golf courses. Singaporean society is a "relentlessly G-rated experience," controlled by a government akin to a megacorporation, fixated on conformity and behavioural constraint and with a marked lack of humour and creativity.〔 Gibson finds it painful to try to connect with the Victorian Singapore, of which few vestiges remained. In an attempt to uncover Singapore's underlying social mechanisms, the author searches fruitlessly for an urban underbelly, rising at dawn for jetlagged walks on several mornings only to discover that the city-state's "physical past … has almost entirely vanished".〔〔 He gives an overview of the history of Singapore from the founding of modern Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 to the Japanese occupation and the establishment of the Republic in 1965. He concludes that modern Singapore, effectively a single-party state and capitalist technocracy, is a product first and foremost of the vision of three-decade Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.〔 As an aside, he quotes a headline from the ''South China Morning Post'' detailing the trial of a cadre of economists, a government official (current Deputy Prime Minister, Tharman) and a newspaper editor for divulging a state secret by revealing the Singaporean economic growth rate.〔 Gibson deplores the absence of an authentic metropolitan feeling,〔 something which he blames for the "telling lack of creativity".〔 He gives a psychogeographic account of the architecture of the city-state, noting the endless parade of young, attractive and generically attired middle class through the host of shopping centers, and comparing the city-state to the convention district of Atlanta, Georgia. He finds the selection in music stores and bookshops unrelentingly bland, musing whether this is partially attributable to the efforts of the Undesirable Propagation Unit (UPU), one of several state censorship agencies. Amidst the near total absence of bohemianism and counterculture, Gibson finds no trace of dissidence, an underground, or slums.〔〔 In the place of a sex trade, the author finds government-sanctioned "health centers" – in fact massage parlours – and mandatory dating organized and enforced by government agencies. "()here is remarkably little", he writes of the city-state "that is not the result of deliberate and no doubt carefully deliberated social policy."〔 The creative deficit of the city-state is evident to the author also in the Singaporeans' obsession with consumerism as a pastime, the homogeneity of the retailers and their fare, and in what he characterizes as their other passion: dining (although he finds fault with the diversity of the food, it is, he remarks "something to write home about").〔 He returns then to the theme of the staid insipidity of the city-state, observing the unsettling cleanliness of the physical environment and the self-policing of the populace. In detailing Singaporean technological advancement and aspirations as an information economy, Gibson casts doubt on the resilience of their controlled and conservative nature in the face of impending mass exposure to digital culture – "the wilds of X-rated cyberspace".〔 "Perhaps", he speculates, "Singapore's destiny will be to become nothing more than a smug, neo-Swiss enclave of order and prosperity, amid a sea of unthinkable...weirdness."〔 Toward the end of the essay, Gibson briefly covers two applications of the death penalty by the Singaporean justice system; he excerpts a report from ''The Straits Times'' about Mat Repin Mamat, a Malay man sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle a kilogram of cannabis into the city-state, and follows this with a description of the case of Johannes Van Damme, a Dutch engineer found with significant quantities of heroin with the same consequence. He expresses reservations about the justice of capital punishment and describes the Singaporeans as the true bearers of zero tolerance. After hearing the announcement of Van Damme's sentencing, Gibson decides to leave, checks out "in record time" from the hotel, and catches a cab to the airport. The trip is conspicuous for the absence of police along the road, but there is an abundance of them at the Changi Airtropolis, where Gibson photographs a discarded piece of crumpled paper, incurring their ire. Flying into Hong Kong he briefly glimpses the soon-to-be-destroyed shantytown Kowloon Walled City at the end of one of the runways at the chaotic Kai Tak Airport, and muses about the contrast with the staid and sanitized city-state he has left behind. The essay ends with the declaration "I loosened my tie, clearing Singapore airspace."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Disneyland with the Death Penalty」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|
