Patriarchal confession
Foucault and the Singaporean hotel in Eric Khoo’s In the Room
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21783339 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ian Dixon (0000-0002-0971-8460, Nanyang Technological University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 36-52 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Review of Film and Television Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-0309 • E-ISSN: 1740-7923 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17400309.2025.2461486 |
| OpenAlex | W4412915947 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
Eric Khoo’s In the Room presents the hotel as a cinematic metaphor for formerly closeted sexuality in Singapore. The film offers images of heterosexuality as well as homosexuality and transgender identity, even embracing female empowerment in a national context where such sympathies are rare. However, despite Khoo’s ostensible liberalism, the hotel does not represent sensual freedom, but rather enacts an uncritical and repressive worldview. Indeed, the diegesis reveals a confessional discourse, which titillates men in what appears to be an ars erotica yet yields to a deeper patriarchal discourse as scientia sexualis in Foucault’s sense. This case study interrogates the text through the lens of Foucault’s radical historicism including his panopticon/synopticon theory and references Singaporean scholarship from Kenneth Paul Tan, Edna Lim, and Jan Uhde and Yvonne Ng Uhde. Similarly, Esha Niyogi De’s Foucauldian stance positions Singapore’s Board of Film Censors (BFC) as a superseded force. Margaret Carlisle Duncan’s panoptical feminism complements Kiran Raveendran and Dhishna Pannikot’s approach to queer desire as relevant to Khoo’s (apparently) pan-sexual text. With such Foucauldian scrutiny, this article examines the hotel room as a repeated prison cell arranged for the male viewer’s pleasure and judgment: a paternalistic idealism reminiscent of Catholic absolution rites and neo-Confucianist ideals. This reveals the text to be more in line with Western scientia sexualis than ars erotica as Khoo’s ostensible liberalism yields to its deeper patriarchal discourse proving more morally restrictive than liberating – especially for women
Art · Art history · Literature · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · South Asian Cinema and Culture
Foucault at the Movies
Discipline and Punish
Tear down the walls
Imagining film censorship in Singapore
Foucault's History of Sexuality Volume I, The Will to Knowledge
Cinema and Television in Singapore
Sexing Up Singapore
The Viewer Society
Choosing What to Remember in Neoliberal Singapore
Apollinian Scientia Sexualis and Dionysian Ars Erotica
Eating Their Way Out of Patriarchy
Queer Desire and Surveillance Optics
Foucault, Management and Organization Theory
The Politics of Women's Body Images and Practices
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |