Desiring the Singapore story: affective attachments and national identities in Anthony Chen's Ilo Ilo

Abstract

In 2013, Anthony Chen's Ilo Ilo/Pa ma bu zai jia became the first Singaporean film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in Singapore during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the film portrays the lives of an ordinary middle-class family and their Filipino maid, Teresa. This article explores the affective ties to the ‘Singapore Story,’ an authoritative narrative of the city-state's nation-building history and progress determining (economic) success. Drawing on Lauren Berlant's notion of ‘cruel optimism,’ I argue that the film's main characters are dangerously attached to the idea of living the Singapore story. I further contend that Teresa's migrant domestic labor, which both sustains and troubles the Singapore story, exposes for audiences issues of loss, absence and dislocation. Employing Kathleen Stewart's notion of ‘ordinary affects,' the characters' everyday interactions and bonds formed through the figure of Teresa manifest her outsider status and the undesired costs of maintaining the Singapore story, such as dysfunctional family relations and other social issues attributed to foreign domestic workers. Using affect theory to examine Singaporean cinema, this paper interrogates what constitutes Singapore's national identity by tracking the modes of affective investment in the Singapore story.