The Force Awakens and VIP motorcades
28 December 2015(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 28 December 2015 issue)
Dear Kam,
Have you seen The Force Awakens? What’s it like? No, don’t tell me, I haven’t seen it yet.
Awakening Force
I know a secret and it’s driving me crazy. I want to tell everybody but I can’t. I know that eventually I can, but I don’t know how long I have to wait. You see, the thing is, I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens and I can’t talk about it, but I really want to.
I’m a big fan of Star Wars and I think that I could probably write the entire screenplay of the original movie from memory, so I have been very excited about the new movie, but I was planning to wait a few weeks before watching it to let the crowds die down. And then I was lucky to be able to watch one of the very first midnight screenings. Not seeing it early would have meant avoiding the internet and avoiding any contact with human beings for weeks, and that would have driven me insane. I didn’t want to know anything about the movie. I didn’t want to know if it was good or bad, let alone any details about the story, and now I can’t even say if I think it’s good or bad.
Millions of people around the world will watch the new movie, and can millions keep a secret? Despite this being an age when everybody must tell the whole world what they had for lunch, there seems to have been (judging by my Facebook timeline) uniformly good behaviour about keeping the plot details a secret. This is a global cultural moment because millions have decided to not spoil the future for others.
Interestingly, The Force Awakens will not open in China until Jan 9, 2016. China is the world’s second largest cinema-going market (after America) and not opening simultaneously in China meant that The Force Awakens did not have the largest opening weekend of all time. That record is still held by Jurassic World where China accounted for US$90 million (RM386 million) of the movie’s global opening weekend of US$524 million. I wonder if the decision was made to delay China’s opening in order to keep the plotlines secret?
China was completely closed off from the rest of the world in 1977 when Star Wars was first released and throughout the time of the original movie cycle. The China audience were not involved in the original Star Wars pop culture phenomenon, so they can’t be expected to care too much about it. Also, for some reason, the opening has been delayed in India and Greece. Perhaps the story of an epic war fought with fantastical weapons is not so interesting for countries that gave us the Mahabharata and The Iliad. And being able to lift a light sabre with just your thoughts is distinctly boring compared to what Rajinikanth can do.
We all want to know what lies in the future. We want to have the future demystified and have our fears removed. The future is unpredictable and, therefore, frightening, and if it is ever predictable, then the results are usually as disheartening as a late-night voting session in Parliament. But occasionally, something comes along that promises to be a complete pleasure and suddenly, we don’t want our future explained and we want to enjoy the event for ourselves.
If you haven’t yet seen the movie, then I am in the all-powerful position of knowing your future, but for now, I’ll keep my mouth shut and I won’t even say if I think The Force Awakens is good or bad (it’s really, really good. Have I said too much?).
Dear Kam,
There’s been a lot of talk recently about pulling over when there is a VIP motorcade. It never crossed my mind that there was any option. You just have to pull over. Isn’t it?
Motor-Kah
Social media has been abuzz recently over whether drivers have to pull over when VIPs pass with police escorts. Living and driving in KL, I have obviously been nudged aside many times by police-escorted VIPs and have rarely known who was the VIP. But it’s not our place to ask questions like that. Just pull over quickly.
I’ve travelled a bit in my life but I can only think of two places where I’ve seen police-escorted VIPs. I lived in England for 20 years and I never saw any. The late Queen Mother did visit my school back in the Eighties and she probably did have an escort, but I didn’t see. All I saw through the crowd was a very brief glimpse of a pink hat. She was very small.
More recently, I was in Berlin and I saw Chancellor Angela Merkel’s car go past. She had a very impressive police escort with several motorcycle outriders in a perfect V formation in front who maintained their formation even when taking tight corners. And then I was driving on a highway in Thailand when the police told every car to stop. I didn’t understand what was happening but I stopped and waited. Eventually, a motorcade went past in the opposite direction on the other side of the highway. I think it was the king.
Meanwhile, in KL, I’ve been pulled over more times than I can remember. The other day, I could hear sirens and saw a police motorcyclist beckoning for drivers to pull over. And then many police motorcyclists went past me. There were 30. I thought that they must be escorting a VVVIP because I’ve never seen that many. So, it came as a surprise when I discovered that they weren’t escorting anybody. They were escorting themselves.
Reprinted with the kind permission of
