The POTENT PINEAPPLE

Electoral Campaigns as Dramaturgy

Source: Sales of pineapples soar in Singapore after Tharman's poll victory - Social News XYZ

Newly-elected Singapore president Tharman Shanmugaratnam cruised to victory in a convincing 70.4% landslide vote on 1 September.   His two opponents, Ng Kok Siong and Tan Kin Lian crashed to defeat, having garnered only 15.72 and 13.88 percent, respectively, surprising even Mr. Tharman himself. 

Of Tamil descent, Mr. Tharman is the first non-Chinese candidate to win in an open election.  Never mind the doubts about being a long-standing member of the dominant People's Action Party (PAP) that observers claimed could affect his judgment.  Or that his party was recently embroiled in scandals that caused resignations from two members embroiled in extramarital affairs.  None of these misgivings mattered.  His secret weapon?  The pineapple. 

Writing for Channel News Asia (CAN), Ian Tan, lecturer in strategic communications at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, unpacked the symbolic and strategic value of the pineapple.   Mr. Tan argued that the choice of this tropical fruit contributed to one of the "most memorable presidential campaigns in local history" and displayed Tharman's "savviness" in deploying a political symbol that voters could easily connect with.   

Armed with this prickly fruit on the campaign trail, Tharman, as he is fondly called, drew on an old Hokkien term for pineapple, meaning "ong lai," which sounds like "good fortune to come." Tapping into every Singaporean's hopes for good fortune, Mr. Tharman held up the pineapple as a symbol for the future ---  an auspicious, prosperous one that his presidency promised to deliver.   The singular image of tropical fruit and four words blended seamlessly into a formidable campaign battle cry: "Ong lai, huat ah" (Good fortune to come, Prosperity!) was the universal aspirational promise for Singaporeans, the pineapple its visual representation.

Symbols are a vital tool in every candidate's electoral armory.   Symbols have the power to evoke emotions, call to action, and inspire loyalty.  They leave a lasting impression on voters and help create a unique brand identity for a candidate. 

Symbols are like cognitive shortcuts.   Using today's digital jargon, they are like apps.  Tharman's pineapple was undoubtedly a great app, an "immediate talking point," said Channel News Asia.       

Writing about rituals, politics, and power, the anthropologist and historian David Kertzer argued that symbols efficiently condense meanings, unify their diversity and richness, and streamline the "multivocality" of representations.    Because candidates must communicate a plethora of messages and meanings, a single potent symbol can resolve the simultaneity of ideas.  Further, they build an enduring solidarity among participants because symbols can quickly unify disparate points of view.    

Political symbols are the engine of every electoral campaign.  They provide a focus, generate clarity, and sustain enthusiasm, particularly among volunteers who must summon their willingness to go the distance.   In contrast, a bland symbol can cause a campaign to go limp, lose momentum, sputter, and inevitably disintegrate.   

Apart from deploying political symbols is the broad-spectrum task of creating the winning candidate through impression management.  Christ’l De Landtsheer, Professor of Communication Sciences at the University of Antwerp, wrote: "Candidate image  --- a distinct and unambiguous profile conveyed to voters --- is of capital importance."

The sociologist Irving Goffman coined the term "dramaturgy," a theoretical perspective emphasizing human life's expressive/impressive quality.  Goffman argued that although we are rational beings, we are, first and foremost, a communicative species.   We express to impress others. We are always expressing ourselves, always trying to create an impression of ourselves on others, except perhaps when we are asleep.   And dead people can no longer communicate, not electorally anyway. 

Goffman, the sixth most cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences, aptly titled his pathbreaking work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.   Published in 1956, his book remains a standard text among students of sociology. 

Electoral campaigns are a powerful form of dramaturgy, with candidates vying to tell their stories, compete for votes, and craft the most compelling narrative.   Elections are a form of collective storytelling---- the more dramatic, the better.  Voters come together to share and swap these stories, each retelling an embellishment, a garnishment, an ornamentation to defend their preferences and justify their choices, to help them decide about the imagined future of their country.    

Witness television debates during electoral seasons. Candidates don't just present policies and programs based on the calculus of rationality to achieve the greatest social good.  They lay out versions of utopia with flourish and flair.  They choose the loftiest words and relate the perfectly timed vignette oozing with emotion. On-screen, they try to close the physical distance between the medium of television and the far-away voter-audience in their invisible homes. 

Candidates want to achieve intimacy with their audiences while exerting leadership and authority.  They engage in combative reparteé with their opponents yet maintain decorum.    They quip, spar, banter, smile, smirk, ooze with charm, and snarl with venom.   Launch into demagoguery, then wax poetic.  Flash a PowerPoint slide to demonstrate technical expertise.  Maybe crack a joke for comic relief, sing off-key to serenade the viewer-voter.  They want to create a dramatic effect.   Audiences and analysts alike will discuss the outcome of electoral debates along substantive content (fact-checking), but also on the impressions that candidates created and tried to sustain onstage.  Was s/he personable?  Likeable?  Aloof?  Prepared?  Sleepy?  Sloppy?  Fit for Office? Presidential? 

Goffman further argued that all humans constantly create a "universe of appearances, " including speech, dress, posture, bearing, and poise.  Throughout the day, humans perform multiple roles: spouse, daughter, son, parent, grandparent, sibling, underling, friend, enemy, colleague, rival, chief honcho, deputy, aide, confidante, trustee, adversary, coach, mentor, mentee.   In performing these roles daily, humans construct multiple "dramaturgical selves."

More so with electoral candidates.  On the political stage, candidates try to be Everyman/Everywoman.  They are problem-solvers and analysts. Technocrats and visionaries.   Psychotherapists and counselors.  Your best friend and mine, your drinking buddy, my lunch partner.  Your guide, my savior.  Our leader.  Our hero. 

Candidates are scrutinized, interpreted, compared, and contrasted with one another.   They are dissected, respected, ridiculed, reviled, accepted, rejected, idolized, worshipped, emulated.  Politics, like love, is a many-splendored thing.     

Electoral campaigns are occasions when society at large is placed under a collective microscope.   Not only for what the candidates promise them but also for what candidates represent in the lives of voters ---- the enmeshing of The Person and The Promise.   One cannot be severed from the other.

Think of the forthcoming primaries in the United States, where Donald Trump has already taken center stage.  Every bit of his expanding army of legal troubles will become part and parcel of his electoral strategy.  Imagine his many dramaturgical selves ---- victim, aggressor, loudmouth, leader, fighter, advocate, combatant, commander-in-chief, problem-solver, global leader.    Trump on the campaign trail is dramaturgy-on-steroids alongside his histrionics and his hobbled vocabulary.  His political rivals will need to craft and enact their own theatrics if they are to become worthy rivals.

In Asia, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign in 2016 illustrated the power of "disruptive dramaturgy." His campaign speeches were laden with expletives.  Spicy four-letter words were music to the ears of many of his voters, who heard authenticity and candor instead of traditional politicians' polished and well-rehearsed lines.  His trademark jacket and checkered shirts on the campaign trail created an altogether unique dramaturgical image: a disruptor, an outsider, a foul-mouthed rebel, a feisty fighter, a consummate warrior, a champion.  He rambled and cursed his way through his entire six-year presidency and still stepped down with one of the highest approval ratings.  Filipino sociologist Randy David wrote: "Even as he entertained his audiences with his colorful language, he also stirred in them a desperate yearning for redemption."   His adopted tone of the underclass was his distinctive self-presentation. 

And here lies the danger of dramaturgical politics:  its amoral use.   The dramaturgical sociologists T.R Young and Garth Massey warn against the "trappings of theater."   The repertoire of dramaturgical tools is equally available to activists and con artists alike, protestors and publicists, challengers, and communication specialists.  Messrs. Young and Massey refer to the latter as "tribal magicians," the anointed high priests of public relations who can control anyone's image, including those repressive and fraudulent versions that abound in the technological space.   Bereft of all authenticity, dramaturgical politics is reduced to image-mongering and snappy two-second sound bites.     

Returning to President Tharman, who occasioned this essay in the first place, his role may primarily be ceremonial, confined to officiating at state events and representing Singapore on the global stage to expand and deepen relationships with other countries.  This is a fitting task for the president of a tiny city-state with big-sized ambitions to punch above its weight. 

However, the president's most prominent and essential role is his fiduciary responsibility to oversee and protect Singapore's financial reserves.  Drawdowns were made during the global financial crisis in 2009 and 2020-2021 during the pandemic.  Former Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat explained that the reserves are a "bulwark against extraordinary crises and provides a buffer against shocks and attacks on Singapore's financial system."  Though the exact amount is unknown, the estimates hover around US$1.64 trillion, according to Wikipedia.  A small city-state with an outsized economy and humongous wealth, President Tharman’s work is cut out for him.  

It will take more than symbolism and dramaturgy for President Tharman to ensure that Singapore's wealth is safeguarded and nurtured.  Singapore's long-term survival and success rests on the president's ability to act as its responsible custodian.  But he once held the portfolio of Minister of Finance.  So, no worries there. 

Then, there is the quality and force of his personality and international reputation.  Kazimier Lim wrote for The Diplomat: "Tharman will discharge his duties with wit, decorum, and the situational awareness a president should encompass in representing the Singaporean brand on the global stage."   No worries there either.

Best of all, President Tharman carries a large stick:  his convincing mandate.  His presidency rests on legitimacy more than anything else.  He doesn't need pineapple images from hereon.