Who wants to be a superhero?

Captain Obvious

We’ve had Survivor (1997 – yes, that old!), Big Brother (1999), Fear Factor (2001), American Idol (2002), America’s Next Top Model (2003), Beauty and the Geek (2005 – a favourite), amongst many, many others. Granted, the format’s nowhere near new, but there are now so many “reality” tv shows that the makers of reality tv shows are running out of real things to make reality tv shows out of.

So how, like that? Running out of reality? Turn to fantasy lah!

Which is exactly what “Who wants to be a superhero?” is trying to do I suppose – get people to break out their spare spandex, toss a lasso, spin a web, leap over tall buildings and so on. Quite fun if you’re keen on reliving primary school games. One of my primary school classmates who went on to become a Channel 8 actor used to lurrrrve playing Wonder Woman when we played at being superheroes during recess and between classes. It didn’t matter a tiny bit to himself that he was a fat, mostly Chinese-speaking boy with a chipped tooth. Didn’t matter how much he got teased either, with taunts like “你那么 fat, invisible 飞机 how to fly？”

But with a little imagination, and little regard for what people think of you, some of the contestants have created super powers that are quite um… interesting. Take “Hyper-strike“, who is “able to turn his own sweat into a weapon”. He’d be a hit in Singapore. Air-conditioning would be to him what kryptonite is to Superman. Noooo… Not. The. Air. Con. Must. Perspire. Probably also faces tough competition and turf wars with Captain Stinko.

Then, there’s also “Basura“, an environmentally friendly superhero who “turns trash into treasure and reshapes rubbish into robots.”

If we had a similar program in Singapore, seeing as we’re rather prone to adapting formats for local consumption, what heroes would we conjure up from our spare fabric lying at home?

Sick and tired of loitering louts downstairs of your home? Be sick and tired no more!

Behold! Void-Deck Man!

Look out for his monogrammed jersey, and every time you see louts hanging around your void-deck, drinking, playing chess or, more likely bottle caps, call out for VD Man! Not to be confused with the fella who takes trips to Batam!

Or, behold! Captain Jump-Q! Able to get you that box of donuts you’ve been hankering for in under three hours! NDP tickets? No problem! You just have to reimburse him for his cab fare. Don’t worry about the taxi queues either!

But really though, who do we really have? Who will save us? Who will defend us while we sleep? Not VR-Man. (James Lye is damned lucky that that show was aired almost ten years ago, before the ingterneck became really big and everyone started uploading pictures of bad tv shows – I can’t find any pictures!).

Then who? Who? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to who? Who?

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Behold, Captain SMRT! Captain who? SMRT?

That’s the best we can come up with? Captain SMRT? WTF?!

How do you even pronounce his name? Captain Smurt? Captain Ass Am Arty? What kind of hero name is that?

Besides, I’m not really sure what his superpowers are, and I only read in the Straits Times yesterday that he goes around giving out free SMRT tickets to people who hold on to handrails and stand on the left side while riding escalators. Also, I hear that SBS bus drivers are wondering, “Captain, so what? We also bus captain, you don’t see us in a mask and cape. Siao.

And there’s probably good reason for Captain SMRT to be masked. His mild-mannered secret identity might be beaten up if he wasn’t. And does his mild mannered secret identity hold on to handrails and stand to the left while riding escalators? Or would that give his game away? So many questions, so little time.

Still, I’d give a little more time to guessing Captain SMRT’s mild-mannered secret identity’s day job.

You know how traditional superheroes (if there’s such a thing as a traditional superhero) have secret identities which are mundane, like Peter Parker’s a photographer, Clark Kent is a junior reporter, and Bruce Wayne is a millionaire…. eh? OK, but anyway, our local hero would have a job that’s really, really, really, really mundane, so that being Captain SMRT is a real step up.

So, I’d go for “chief bonelessness inspector in a boneless chicken factory”, where, you know, by day, all he does is poke around to ensure the bonelessness of the boneless chickens in the boneless chicken factory?

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