RK House -No Pork

One night, one of my children let me hear a sound file entitled “RK House – No Pork”. Apparently the recording was a copy cat of the film Borat. It featured some boys visiting a famous prata shop in Serangoon Garden. The boys consistently asked for pork when placing their order knowing that the shop was a halal one. The aim, I supposed was to make the shopkeeper angry and secretly record his angry respond.

While my children were laughing at the conversation that was taking place in the sound file, my husband and I was worried about the consequence that this sound file will have. After the laughter had died, we instructed them not to pass the sound file nor share it with their friends, as we felt that the boys in the sound file had shown disrespect to our Muslim community.

I was watching one episode of the show, The Arena, where the topic discussed was “Don't try to be funny! Our society does not encourage a sense of humour.”

There are many ways to encourage a sense of humour in our society. Having taken part in many humorous contests in the Toastmaster circle, I have come to realized that humour if handled well, will bring more then a knowing smile to the listener. But handled incorrectly and it will hurt especially when the joke is made at the expense of others.

When I make a humorous speech, I always try to make sure that the materials I used are used to laugh at myself. It shows that I do not take myself too seriously. This makes others more comfortable with me. Therefore, it should be alright for me to make joke about my pleasantly plum figure but I do not make fat joke about other people.

Drawing a line between acceptable and unacceptable humour does not mean that our society does not encourage a sense of humour.

I remembered a local cartoonist, George Noris wrote a cartoon book entitled “Hello Chok Tong, Goodbye Kuan Yew. “ It was a ground breaking book when it was published in 1991 as it tried to make us laugh at ourselves. He was pushing the boundary but with a sense of responsibility. It was courageous of him to explore the limit and he confessed in that book that many publishers were not willing to embark on that project because they felt that he was touching on a taboo subject.

However, in this case, I feel that the boys have oversteps their boundary. They cannot claime that the tape was made in the name of humour and entertainment as the laughter was gain at the expense of making another person looks bad.

One teenager posted her video response to the tape on Youtube praising the boys for having the gut to make such a video, for doing a good job and that she looks forward to more such production.

Like many teenagers, she sees only the entertainment value of the tape without considering the impact that such a tape would have on others.


There are three kinds of impact that any mass media will have on the audience. --- the intended explicit impact, and the unintended impact Here, I believe that the intended impact explicit was to have fun, make a joke and be entertained. The unintended impact however, is that it might have hurt the feeling of those who are being made fun of.
In this era where anyone and everyone can easily make sound file, video file and
Pod cast, there is a need for all of us to be aware of the consequence of our action.




This article was not published.