The Showgirl And The Minister
By Felix Cheong and Arif Rafhan
Graphic novel/Penguin Random House SEA/Paperback/128 pages/$16.56/Amazon SG (amzn.to/48ksECf)
4 stars
Singapore’s pre-Independence chief minister Lim Yew Hock’s reputation is generally one of infamy. He is best known for his tactless suppression of Chinese students’ and workers’ protests during his tenure between 1956 and 1959.
Losing to Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party in the 1959 Legislative Assembly general election, his relevance to Singapore’s history faded.
But this setback shunted, rather than ended, his political career: One unfortunate effect of the neglect of this afterlife is that it has become du jour to forget that he was appointed Malaysian High Commissioner to Australia in 1964.
In 1966, he disappeared for 10 days without warning – his photos plastered across Australian news channels – later brought back by a guesthouse operator who claimed he found Lim vomiting in the streets.
Singaporean writer Felix Cheong and Malaysian illustrator Arif Rafhan have reimagined this Houdini act in a breezy, noir graphic novel that thrusts to the fore Lim’s alleged affair with 19-year-old stripper Sandra Nelson.
They revel in the areas where history has stayed silent. Lim’s vanishing becomes the key to a Cold War conspiracy, involving cut-throat loan sharks, Indonesian fixers and Russian gangsters during the tail-end of Konfrontasi, the conflict waged by Indonesia to protest the formation of the Malaysian state. There is also seduction, blackmail and a car chase.
Notably, Lim and Nelson have both denied allegations of the affair. Lim later resigned from his diplomatic post and remarried.
It is inevitably all a bit tongue-in-cheek. Cheong and Arif splice in Tarantino-esque chapter titles, such as “That’s Where The Dog Is Buried” and the more to-the-point “The Stand-off”. These are paired with minimalist graphics of an ice-cool drink or a pair of handcuffed hands on a black page to add to the sense of quirky Western fun.
But most conspicuous is Cheong’s rhyming couplets, schlocky and brazen. Before Nelson’s bra comes off, Lim teases: “Aren’t you supposed to make your customer feel good, not old?” Nelson replies: “I am nothing but your truth, naked and bold.”
Nearly every line is hyper-aware word play, leaning into its comic cheesiness – “not a dime lost, but your penny drops” – or obvious puns force-fitted in just for the jokes: “It’s not in my job description at all!/Mate, neither is common sense./Oh, shut up before I make you past tense.”
And then it goes silent, in a wordless nine-page-long action sequence that slows time down. Arif was reportedly inspired by Slam Dunk mangaka’s Takehiko Inoue, especially that last minute of the final game recently animated in the film The First Slam Dunk (2022).
Here are just two men having fun with story and form, imbuing a lost, Malayan cult history with glamour and some excitement.
If you like this, read: Goh Keng Swee: A Singaporean For All Seasons by Felix Cheong and Cheah Sinann (Epigram Books, 2023, $24.54, Amazon SG, go to amzn.to/3HY36jA). Yet another graphic novel by Cheong that celebrates the visionary man behind the Jurong industrial estate, Jurong Bird Park and Singapore Armed Forces.
