A Postmodern look on Freeze For Fun Event ~ Independent Thoughts

I attended a Freeze For Fun Event organized by Moe Alkaff, an exceptional entertainer and a kind human being. It was for a charitable cause. Moe Alkaff made good on his word . He donated more than he promised to a charity. I was fortunate to be a part of the event.

In the process of the event, I experienced and felt an emancipating understanding of the politics of identity.

I reached Raffles Place at 1220 hours. As I walked from the bus stop at Fullerton Square passed my old workplace HSBC Building, my thoughts explicitly speculated on the number of former colleagues I could have brought along had I been working there still. It would be fun and it be easier for me for familiarity of faces. I saw Moe and his gang in front of the old Change Alley looking all geared up to refrigerate the Raffles Place lunch time crowd.

I was undecided whether I should approached Moe to ask him what was going to happen. I was under the impression that the freeze would be unexpected and spontaneous, freezing at 1245 hours in the middle of things and approaching Moe after the deed was done. I thought that was the plan. So I went and sat near where the action was to start.

After a while it seems that my assumptions were wrong and I went to approach Moe. Moe was all bubbly and ready to go and he explained to me how the freeze was to be done. At this point, I realized that my well thought of a plan for a freeze pose, sitting down reading the newspaper would proved illegal in the Freezing fraternity. Moe suggested a few poses and I got on to it fast. However, I knew well that my troubling knees would not hold still for three minutes. My mind was racing fast as to what I needed to do, I could not spoil the event by being literally the jerk. Time was running out.

Moe gave me a reprieve when he suggested that we do freeze just outside the Old Change Alley area which is now known as Hitachi Tower. I positioned myself against one the pillars outside the building and took up newspaper to read. At 1245 hours, Moe gave the cue for the freeze………………………………………………………………............... my eyes roamed from side to side behind my dark sunglasses as I look in amazement at the statues that were all over the place. There was a babe who was about to do her lips red, a circle of two men and woman in silence prayer, a gal looking up into the heavens and a thirsty lady who was about to drink from her bottle of H2O . I could not see Moe as my back was towards him but my thoughts were in disbelieve as I remembered that the last thing he did before the freeze was to carry a chap on shoulders. Moe was doing an acrobatic freeze.

The amazement turned amusing as I watched with my hidden eyes the reaction of the unsuspecting crowd. Their faces were not frozen but their shocks were. They seemed to be at lost as to what was happening. In an instance, they became the “Others”. It then dawned upon me that while my eyes had only met these strange frozen faces on that day, at the point of the freeze, they were no more strangers to me as we shared an identity and a similarity. We became identified to the act of freezing and to Moe. We became “We” and we became “us” The natural reaction from public provided the platform of difference as they were moving and thus, they were not “we”. They became “They” and they were the “Others” This simple action of freezing had provided a subconscious formation of identity and formation of difference.

When Moe gave the cue for the end of the freeze, there were cheers all around. We had done the deed. Moe thanked all of us collectively and personally and we were handed out souvenirs for the event. As I walked away after the event like many others with a sense of accomplishment, we were walking back to our normality. The temporal identity was deconstructed once the act of freezing was undone. We were strangers again. We were no more different from the public than that we had been perceived to be nor from that we had perceived ourselves to be.

The whole exercise was truly emancipating for all of us and especially for the one who attempts to see a deconstructive world.