THE EMO-LUTION
this post is going to be long due to pent up feelings of outrage ( and all its connotations) on the following issue. DISCLAIMER, do not read if you're narrow-minded and prejudiced against the emo culture. i'm not an Emo fanatic, neither am i an advocate of some of its beliefs and actions. i'm just another teenager of Gen Y who believes in freedom of choice for individuality and personality ( no, i'm not a hippie).
as every literate person in singapore will "know" by now, emo equals bad. wait a minute. so now we're labelling emoness as a bad culture which we should exterminate? what happened to pre-marital sex, promiscuity, homosexuality(not saying its bad) and etc.? i mean, you guys do that right? so why condemn us? aren't we the lesser evil? we don't leave, erm, stuff behind, we don't break hearts, we don't scar people for lives, we don't even talk to you. so why now the outcry for emo-termination?
reading the reports after articles about the emo culture in singapore, i couldn't but help act the critic for the critic.
in the Straits Times, dated 2 April 2007 in the YouthInk forum (pg H7) , Ms. Jessica Lim wrote an article entitled " Emo heroes: Just a bunch of zeroes". basically "commenting" on the new type of heroes, the EMO HERO. the man in question here is none other than Michael Scofield aka Wentworth Miller of Prison Break fame. first up for dissection, the Emo Hero isn't a recent phenomenon. in modern and not so modern literature, we deem him the anti-hero, a main character in a dramatic or narrative work who is characterized by a lack of traditional heroic qualities, such as idealism or courage as defined by dictionary.com . this anti-hero labels ties in with your description of Scofield - "As a character, he is after all, awkward, anti-social, self-alienated, cruel, obnoxious or selfish". okay, now we question, what's so bad about the anti-hero/Emo Hero? You say the Emo Hero is "getting tedious and cliched". FYI, your characterisation of Scofield is obviously limited and viewed narrowedly. i mean come on, awkward? harry potter, a quintessential hero (who displayed and displays traditional hero qualities such as courage, etc.) was an awkward one as well. at least Rowling managed to humanise him. in the same way, Scofield, who is not just "awkward, anti-social, etc", he is more than that. otherwise, he's just another one-dimensional fictional construct. before you clamour that i'm being biased, lets swing over to the other spectrum, where Scofield is a "delinquent". anti-social behaviour, check ( though i'm not so sure about that. i mean socialising in prison? he was romancing Sara!) , self-alienated, check, and selfish, check. i'm sorry. while trying to maintain objectiveness, the fact that this claim to be " a bad person" ( as you make the Emo Hero out to be, correct me if i'm wrong) because of such qualities just seem like such a lame attempt. i mean for crying out loud, your description is based on a man stuck in a prison filled with hooligans and gangsters who first don't care for socialising ( in the way we non-prison attendees define it, not that we're socially different), and second care about being humble. but credit for crediting him obnoxiousness anyway because in the episode of "Brothers Keepers", he was quite proud towards Lincoln. but that lasted for an episode only. anyway, for self-alienated and selfish, forgive me if i'm wrong, aren't they quite contradictory? but hey if self-alienated is the same as low self-worth, then you hit the nail on the spot. however, this is mainly due to feelings of abandonment in his youth. but this also makes him more sympathetic to others suffering if you paid close attention when the doc was going on about his lower latent inhibition. so there, we kinda summed up the character of the Emo Hero based on Michael Scofield. is he such a bad person? according to who? by what values? and that leads us to your statement, " Meet Gen Y's role model: the emo hero". okay, so let us (or rather just me) clarify somethings. Gen Y as in youths, teenagers? like aged between 13-20? okay so now, (since YOU used Prison Break, we shall continue using Prison Break as the example) the director of Prison Break (PB), is Paul Scheuring born 1968, so he would be 38 at the time of PB's premier which was in 2005. Now, he's not really of Gen Y is he? so would it be a correct term to use the Emo Hero as our role model? according to who? anyway looking at PB's demographics, it caters to a more mature and adult audience. from wikipedia, which may be a little dubious, "Due to its storyline and setting, Prison Break's target audience is the 18-34 age group. The show contains adult content including violence, coarse language, sexual and drug references." So would it be a better description to call it our P65's (excluding the non-working Gen Y) role model instead? unless you yourself are above such a role model?
in the article, it ( lets not be personal here) also says that " He may be cute, brainy and kind. Unfortunately, he is also a bit dumb". wait. the last time i checked, brainy (intelligent, clever) was quite the opposite of dumb (stupid; dull-witted). hmm, the paradoxical hero now? as claimed by the article. as caption, it said " Forget Superman or Luke Skywalker. The new teen 'hero' is a tattoo-sporting convict. Shudder". okay so now we're condemning tattoos, convicts or both? now we're on dangerous territory with the convict issue. so we can't give him a second chance? a convict can't be a hero? another famed "convict" is xXx agent Xander Cage played by Vin Diesel who plays convict-turned-hero. so he's bad too? okay now for the former. tattoos are bad. though deemed to be gangsterish and with all its associations, tattooing oneself is all too common-place.
you also talk about how "dumb" it is for the tattoo to be on his torso and should rather be on his thighs. now wait for a minute and think. THINK. it's a television drama. it's not porn firstly. putting on his thighs might lead to over-exposure of unnecessary viewing. okay, so you say that it can be easily solved by underwear ( i mean don't you see the trend of the shy hollywood man who is adverse to showing too much down there?) anyway, look at the proportion of his entire torso versus his upper thighs?would it fit firstly? he would also still need to "swivel his head at a mirror" to look behind his thighs anyway. anyway, why are you so uptight about the tattoo anyway, its not as if he has not enough time to look at them, so does it really hurt to swivel?
"Yes it makes good TV. But 30 years ago, that same scenario might never become the hit of today". We're in 2007.
"Wholesome, toothsome and brimming with hope, that generation would have baulked at a character like Scofield, instead of accepting as role model". You quote Star Wars's Luke Skywalker. but what about Han Solo who has his legions of fans as well. he's quite the Emo Hero based on his selfishness stemmed from survival ( quite similar to Michael Scofield). Han Solo is not exactly from our era is he?
" So great is our attraction to the emo hero that even his giving up of a great career and a posh apartment - in other words, everything he's worked for - may be forgiven". and so leave his innocent brother to die unjustly?so the great value of self-sacrifice is now being questioned? people sympathise and respect one who is willing to give up his all for his loved one. people cannot be earned, or gained, once dead, they're gone. money, riches, or in this case a great career and a posh apartment can always be attained again. they are temporal.
" To our credit, we identify with this emo hero because we feel shunned by ' the establishment"'. True. who doesn't identify with the underdog? who doesn't identify with the one is being persecuted despite being "right"? who has never misunderstood?
"But does it go too far when we are known for being so 'emo' that we are willing to destroy ourselves in more outlandish ways than our predecessors". so you justify destroying ourselves? i'm sorry if i misunderstood, but are you saying that we are supposed, expected to destroy ourselves? just that now, our Gen Y (not counting the fact of PB's demographics but rather the emo culture) is destroying ourselves in an outlandish manner? either that i'm really dumb or that sentence doesn't make sense whatsoever. i assume you are referring to self-mutilation and suicide. true, we are might be going too far. but are we going to question one's morals now? see suicide and emo-ing are pretty different even though their paths do tend to cross regularly. Emo, as in being emotional, is more than just depression. we don't just kill ourselves? i believe, and hope you respect by believing this, that we're more rational and sane than that. the minority (though increasing) of suicidal people have always been there. through different fads, different appearances, they have always been there. this following excerpt is taken from the National Youth Council of Singapore's website :
"TEEN SUICIDES : RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS THE MAIN CAUSE OF FRICTION with parents and breaking up with boyfriends or girlfriends are the main factors that push Singapore's under-20s over the edge. Not so stress over school grades. In only three of the 28 youth suicides in 2001 was it a possible trigger, according to a study by three doctors. One was a nine-year-old girl. The figures debunk the popular perception that pressure to do well in school is driving Singapore's young to the brink. They also show that (a) more boys than girls (16 against 12) commit suicide (b) all jumped off high-rise residential blocks (c) almost half (13) were school dropouts, and (d) three-quarters were aged between 14 and 19, with the youngest aged nine. But the figures do not indicate a trend, said Dr Daniel Fung, adding that the annual average in the past five years is 20 youths." though this article was written in 2003, the Emo culture had already begun its revolution. if not under the guise of relational problems, we have peer pressure, stress and what-have-you-nots.
" How did we become so repulsed by the image of being upstanding, hopeful, wholesome - or even toothsome - that we don't know which way is up any more". Up as according to who? cultural perception? i believe this repulsion has always been there. anti-establishment is not a new fad. sure, being "upstanding, etc." are all good values and all. but how about your self-righteousness and pseudo perfection. the main bulk of Emo Kids despair against the hypocrisy and for lack of better word, self-righteousness of you mainstream adults, our actual supposed role models. rather than give us hope, you paint the world shades of black and grey, bleak existence by your double standards and all your plasticness. yes call us "angst-filled youths" but remember, at least we're living our lives truly and we're not the kettles calling the pot black.
"Maybe we aren't calling delinquency what it is: bad for you, attention seeking and not very clever". So now we're referring the Emo culture as delinquency? okay so lets define juvenile delinquency - behavior of a child or youth that is so marked by violation of law, persistent mischievousness, antisocial behavior, disobedience, or intractability as to thwart correction by parents and to constitute a matter for action by the juvenile courts. no where in its definition does it say being emotional, cutting oneself (not that i'm condoning it) or being depressed? it is none of it. now your definition, of it being bad. its quite subjective isn't it. to you, the self-righteous outside, looking down from your ivory tower, you look at us with disdain and pity that we're wasting our lives away. but we look up to you and feel sorry for you, that you are so unaware and so caged in by your narrowness and prejudice. attention-seeking, now that's a term that keeps coming up in articles tacking this issue. you say we're attention-seeking. who isn't? do you even know of us. not wanting to sound the typical teenage rebel who implores misunderstanding, your views of us being attention-seeking seem just a lame provocation to stir us out of our Emoness to prove you wrong. and so? we didn't raise the issue. we were pretty fine the way we were. if were attention-seeking of any sort, do you think we would seek it from you? the establishment? or our parents? i'm sure your opinion ( on our issues) matter to us. if were attention seeking at all, we would be seeking one another's attention rather. call it a pity-party or whatever, who are you to judge? your limited view on how people should be behave and treat one another is rather moralistic and based on convention. i know you think we're such a sad, sorry case, but forgive me for sounding harsh, you do too.
"What's so wrong with being a bona fide good guy anyway?" Now we wouldn't want it to be "getting tedious and cliched" would we?
and lastly, " Can't a hero be cute, brainy, kind - and smart?'' Well, perfection is so yesterday.
haha, i just heard that Wentworth Miller is gay. haha, new discussion?
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