Everything Also Complain

From ‘NZ restaurant apologises for haka flash mob’, 16 Sept 2012, article in Soshiok, asiaone.com

A New Zealand bar and restaurant in Clarke Quay has come forward to apologise for “misunderstandings”, after about 20 of its staff performed a traditional haka dance along a walkway in busy Orchard Road last Sunday. The haka – a traditional Maori dance made famous by New Zealand rugby team All Blacks – was performed in a flash-mob style.

It received mixed reviews among netizens after a video of the performance was posted online earlier this week, on websites like citizen-journalism website Stomp, with some calling it “cringe-worthy” and others calling it “good fun”.

The video shows participants, some topless, breaking out into loud chanting in a crouching stance, slapping their hands against their bodies and stamping their feet, all of which are part of a haka dance. my paper understands that the restaurant, Fern & Kiwi, had not applied for a public-entertainment licence from the Singapore Police Force prior to its staff appearing in Orchard Road.

Any public performance requires such a licence. The restaurant’s owners were called in by the police for questioning yesterday. They declined to give more details as the case is ongoing.

During university orientation days we had to do silly things in crowded places just to entertain our sadistic seniors, and I never knew if they had to apply for public performance licences. If I did, I would have probably declined embarrassing myself on the basis that such shenanigans are downright illegal and I can’t afford to have a criminal record when I still have my entire future ahead of me. Damn you orientation camp leaders!

Applying for a grant to do something ‘spontaneous’ totally defeats the purpose of a ‘flash mob’, though what Fern & Kiwi has done in Orchard Road may be considered as a cheap advertising stunt as well.  I visited the Facebook page and was pleased to note that it wasn’t an organic vegetarian hangout as the name suggests, but a bar catering mainly to expats with a passion for the muddy sport of rugby. It also bears a logo that bears a faint resemblance to a controversially-conceived clothings line.

FNZK

‘Flash mobs’ used to be meaningless stunts done in the name of pure fun, and has evolved into something that blurs the line between ‘performance’, ‘advertising’ or ‘public service message’. Just recently some mothers got together in a ‘Latch on for Love’ ‘flash mob’ to breastfeed their babies. I suspect it’s not just the message of ‘mother’s milk is the best’ that was disseminated, but the very swell of maternal love and hormones in the air may have female passers-by spontaneously ovulating. It was also, to some sensitive viewers who can’t tolerate the sight of bare nipples, dangerously close to the word ‘flash’ being interpreted in another sense altogether. What I really want to ask, though, is: Did they need a public entertainment licence for this?

Latch mob

In celebration of World Sleep Day 2012, 90 people gathered at Raffles Place to take a NAP, it too was labelled a ‘flash mob’ endorsed by the Singapore Sleep Society. First of all, why wait until someone organises a flash mob to promote World Sleep Day, considering all the years of festivities that I missed? Shouldn’t flash mobs be about people actually entertaining someone? Did anyone express concerns about terrorist attacks or a sweeping pandemic after witnessing a pile of motionless bodies lying on a grass patch?  Did they need a public entertainment licence for this?

In March some 300 One direction fans hogged parts of Orchard Road in a ‘flash mob’ dance-off to the UK boyband’s Greatest Hits. Well it’s a MOB alright, and while some may call it harmless fun, calling this a ‘flash mob’ is like describing a riot as a ‘public nuisance’. Shouldn’t there be some regulation against obstructing an entire pavement with synchronised boyband mayhem?   A bunch of Filipina maids also danced the weekend night away outside Ion last year, although no one referred to it then as a ‘flash mob’. Did they need a public entertainment licence for this?

You can also propose to your girlfriend via ‘flash mob’, a trend that threatens to ‘spoil market’ for guys planning to use the ‘Let’s buy a HDB’ ruse. Do you need a public entertainment licence to dance to (the painfully obvious) Bruno Mars’ Marry You? Can you even play Bruno Mars without breaching some public broadcasting copyright law? I could post the proposal video, but that would be infringing this blog’s policy on videos deemed too mushy for general viewing. Why THANKS A LOT, FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, now I can’t impress a woman unless I take up dancing lessons and pay a bunch of people to dance around her to her favourite Taylor Swift song.

(It’s in Russian because the other clips have errors)

In 2008, 400 people froze for 5 minutes in the middle of Orchard Road. If you’re new to performance art, you would have been wondering if you were trapped in some kind of time warp, or part of some Just for Laughs gag. After Michael Jackson’s death, we had tribute Thriller flash mobs. Frankly the second one (video below) gave me goosebumps. Did you need a public entertainment licence for these too?

Fans of Oppa Gangnam style, don’t even THINK about it. Or perhaps I’m already too late..’Opps’.

So as you can see, you make ‘flash mob’ anything and everything, from groupie dancing to exuding bodily fluids and even SLEEPING, as long as it doesn’t have a ‘political’ agenda. What’s inconsistent is how the requirement for permit is applied, and if F&K were ever charged for flouting the law, I’ve given some examples which got away with it for their lawyers to argue the case. My guess as to why the police took notice is that Haka performers look scary and glower like they’re out to hurt someone, especially when they mimic throat-slitting, while no one in their right mind will go out to book a lactating woman.

Filed under: 2000s, 2011, 2012, Advertisements, Art, Bureaucrats, Fun and games, Orchard Road Tagged: | Advertisements, Art, bureaucrats, local food, Orchard Road