Reviews & Articles

圖片說明：
1.-5. 2020年4、5月，在金鐘、石硤尾、深水埗和灣仔仍留下2019年示威時的塗鴉和海報。（圖片由作者提供）

Caption:
1.-5. Remnants of graffiti and posters from 2019 protests, Admiralty, Shek Kip Mei, Sham Shui Po, Wan Chai, April & May 2020. (Photos: John Batten)



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上星期戲院重開，我馬上到訪。因應2019年新冠病毒疫情，戲院座位有了新的安排，也許很多人喜歡這樣：因為部份座位停用，不少座位變成了二人一組、自成一角，情侶爭相選購；單人位也獲單人客垂青。安排可謂近乎完美：煩人的吃爆谷聲或手機屏幕放亮的騷擾不會再在你身旁。然而，戲院不能長此下去，要生存必需更多觀眾；所以，還是盡快回復每行都可坐吧！

我看了《無痛斷捨離》，是一部劇本、鏡頭運用和演出具佳的低成本泰國獨立電影。感性細膩的故事說到年輕設計師阿靜負笈瑞典三年後回國，打算在前鋪後居的家中地鋪創業。她首先需要清理充滿回憶的舊物，所以狠狠地清空每個房間，把所有物件丟掉，直至故友質問為什麼自己少年時代送給阿靜的禮物也被遺棄，阿靜才放慢整理速度，也把禮物和向朋友借來的東西逐一物歸原主，包括留學時被她無情無視電郵，最終分手收場的男朋友。

故事刻劃了我們需要在斷捨離中尋找微妙的平衡，在過程中也得照顧別人感受，可以說是一種真實主義：待人以仁。對別人仁慈，不費一分一毫。

自由黨創黨主席李鵬飛於在2020年5月20日辭世，這位前立法會議員後來也參與廣播和公共事務評論的工作，我與他並不相識。他的觀點通常都是合理和實際的，生前致力爭取香港對普選的期望和共識。可惜的是，像他這樣能成功地獲得政治取向相反陣營支持的人物，在香港已越來越少。在2014年一次香港電台的專訪中，他為香港的政治多元和核心價值護航，並抨擊內地：「……他們想踢走所有民主派……他們指出某些人不愛國，但那不是真的，香港所有人，幾乎所有人都是愛國的。他們只想人們唯命是從，然後像傀儡一樣。傀儡制度在香港是行不通的。」

在我們急於衝刺、希望成功跨過另一天時，暫時停下腳步也有其利––即使那只是五分鐘。停下來想想待人以仁；停下來向那些生前事事關心但很快被忘記的正派人士致敬，特別是在當下點擊一下就跳到下一段數碼新聞的時代。

我們都在期待公園和可以跳舞、可以自由跑跳的場所重開。但是，政府最近分心了，而且也因為新冠病毒下限制我們自由流動的措施放膽起來：例如因為考評局容許一條涉及過份敏感日本侵華的不幸試題出現而挑起報復。說成「引導性問題」是不明智的，出題的用字只令我想起以往故意大唱反調、務求令辯論升溫的題目，當中目的，是讓正反雙方在充滿火藥味的辯論場（或大學入學試試場）上激烈爭辯。在辯場上取勝需要令人信服的論據；在教育中，批判思考是勝券。然而，我們只懂責備的政府只輕蔑地說：「譴責通識教育！」

同樣地，香港電台製作的長壽節目，以幽默諷刺為主軸的《頭條新聞》也應被譴責。據政府所說，它令人難以忍受，而且沒有尊重可言。 我們都知道這個政府沒有幽默感，當很大部份香港市民都一笑置之，行政機關卻皺起眉頭來。但是，香港的核心價值也包括諷刺的權利！

就在官方憂慮如何令自由制度服從的同一個星期，林鄭月娥又急於投訴（又或者可能是太高興？），但卻錯誤引述。曼德拉在種族隔離政策時代曾被監禁，他在獄中完成法律學士，獲釋放不久而尚未成為南非首任黑人總統時，他曾於1990年6月23日在美國波士頓向麥迪遜花園高中的學童演講，他說：「教育是改變世界最有力的武器」。

林太被公然提起曼德拉的用語––我們知道她有足夠的批判思考來了解當中意義！


原文刊於《明報周刊》，2020年5月22日



The benefits of pausing – and education

by John Batten


When the cinemas reopened again last week, I immediately went. Cinema seating has been rearranged by Covid-19 and many might prefer it: seats are blocked off creating isolated islands for two, eagerly grabbed by happy couples, and single seats for the single. It is almost a perfect arrangement: no annoying popcorn munchers or brightly lit mobile phone watchers sitting directly next to you. But it is not sustainable, cinemas need big(ger) audiences to survive; so, let’s reintroduce row seating asap!

I saw Happy Old Year, an excellent low-budget, indie Thai movie with a great script, camera-work and acting. It told a poignant story: June, a young interior designer returns from three years studying in Sweden and wants to set-up her new business on the ground floor of the family shop-house. She must first empty the house of its accumulated belongings and of past memories, so she aggressively cleans rooms and throws away everything, until challenged by a friend who finds her own gift from when they were young teenagers also trashed. June slows her cleaning and, instead, directly returns gifts and possessions that she had borrowed from friends, including a boyfriend that she had broken the relationship by insensitively ignoring his emails while she was studying overseas.

The story depicted the subtle balance of the need to ‘let go’ and ‘move on’, but to be sensitive and caring in the process. It is a truism: be kind. It costs nothing to be kind.

I never knew Allen Lee, the founder of the Liberal Party, legislator, and later broadcaster and public commentator, who died on 15 May 2020. His views were unusually sensible and pragmatic, and he maintained a commitment to Hong Kong’s aspirations for universal suffrage and consensus. Unfortunately, people like him who can successfully engage with both sides of the political divide are becoming increasingly rare in Hong Kong. In 2014, interviewed on RTHK, he defended Hong Kong’s political diversity and core values, and picked at the mainland: “…They want to kick out all the democrats…they have identified people who are unpatriotic, but that’s not true, everybody, almost everybody is patriotic in Hong Kong. They want only people who will listen to them and become a puppet. A puppet system doesn’t work in Hong Kong.”

In our rush to successfully get through another day, there are benefits of pausing - even for a momentary five minutes – and, to remember. To remember to be kind; and, remember to honour people whose lives were decent and who cared, and will too quickly be forgotten, especially in our click-of-the-button-to-the-next-news-story digital age.

We are all awaiting the opening of parks and places to dance to be free to run and dance in. But, the government has been recently distracted, and emboldened by its Covid-19 restrictions on our free movement, it is agitating for revenge on an examinations authority that allowed an unfortunate question on the too-touchy subject of Japanese occupation of the mainland. Being a ‘leading question’ was ill-advised, but its wording merely reminded me of old debating questions that were purposely outrageous to precisely raise the temperature of a debate and be vigorously defended or vigorously dismissed inside a sweaty, divided  debating room – or, university entrance examination hall. In the debating chamber ‘persuasive argument’ wins the debate, in education it is ‘critical thinking.’ Our blaming government merely and dismissively says, “Damn liberal education!”

Likewise, humour and satire on such RTHK-produced television shows as the long-running Headliner should be condemned. It cannot be tolerated because it is disrespectful, says the government. We know this government has no sense of humour and while a majority of the Hong Kong public laughs, this administration scowls. However, Hong Kong’s core values include the right to be satirical!

In the same week as this official anxiety to get our free institutions to conform, Mrs Carrie Lam rushed (was it, possibly, gleefully?) into complaint, but got the quotation wrong. Not long after his release in detention in an apartheid-era prison, the completion of his own LLB in prison, and before becoming South Africa’s first black President, Nelson Mandela addressed school children at Madison Park High School in Boston, USA on 23 June 1990: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Mrs Lam has been publicly reminded of Mandela’s actual words - we know she has the critical thinking skills to understand their meaning!



This article was originally published in Ming Pao Weekly, 22 May 2020. Translated from the original English text by Aulina Chan.