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โครงการรวบรวมและจัดทําวารสารอิเล็กทรอนิกส์ มหาวิทยาลัยเกษตรศาสตร์

236 Humanities Journal Vol.22 No.2 (July-December 2015)

The film is set in Geylang which is the Red Light District in Singapore,
similar to De Wallen’s fish tank in Amsterdam and Patpong in Bangkok.
According to the well-known travelers’ guide book The Lonely Planet Singapore
City Guide, “… this district [Geylang] behind the open-air market is filled with a

Dante-esque assortment of brothels, girlie bars, cheap hotel and alley after alley

lined with prostitutes from all over Southeast Asia in all times.” (Oakley, 2009:
77). The film represents the bustling place from a distance in a documentary-
like style. The long shots are often used with handheld camera which

corresponds to documentary realism. In a number of scenes, the camera
honestly moves past the area without concentrating on any particular object.
The use of real location and available lighting represents a realistic range of
space and time continuum (Arnold, 2007).

At Geylang, the film illustrates lives of sexual pleasure providers and
pleasure seekers along with other kinds of seekers and providers. In the film,
Geylang could be somewhere or elsewhere in Southeast Asian countries that
characterizes the vibrant of cultural exchange. In one scene, a man is offered a

service of women from different countries, leaving the question of national
specificity. Since sexual pleasure is universal, the globalized commercial culture
has created new identities that are no longer connected to any specific nation or
place of origin.

The fact that the film runs at a slow pace, lacks causality in the
narrative and goal-oriented characters marks its position of counter-cinema.
Unlike Hollywood or mainstream films with goal-oriented characters, most of the

characters in Pleasure Factory move around pointlessly. Three interweaving
stories of pleasure seekers and providers during the same night in Geylang are
added in a vague narrative and discontinued editing.