SINGAPORE -- France has the Eiffel Tower. America has the Statue of Liberty. Singapore has Brian. 'Brian' is the pet name given to the Merlion Tower by Australian James Martin, who designed Singapore's national monument. A massive cement statue with a lion's head and a fish's body, the 12- story, $10 million Merlion Tower rears up over Singapore from its hilltop perch on the theme park islet of Sentosa, where it was unveiled in June. Just after dark each night, the creature's eyes begin to glow red. Some 16,000 fiber optic lights in its concrete skin change its color from green to a rich purple to soft red. Smoke hisses from the beast's nostrils and green laser beams blaze from its eyes, cutting all the way across the harbor into the city's skyline. Some Singaporeans hope the Merlion tower will become an emotionally powerful icon helping unite the people of this multiracial, multicultural former British colony as they grope for a national identity just 30 years after independence. Others express open contempt for the statue's garishness. They want a more dignified symbol of their collective character. 'The Merlion is nothing more than a kind of cartoon character,' Goh Sin Tub wrote in a letter to the Straits Times newspaper. 'It is neither fish nor fowl, with no link to our culture or history.' Merlion's promoters argue that there is a link -- a 26-foot (8-m) fountain built as a tourist attraction at the mouth of the Singapore River in 1972.
Although the original Merlion has found its way onto thousands of postcards, trinkets and souvenir chocolates, 'It has never quite captured the heart or mind of the average Singaporean,' Straits Times writer Koh Buck Song said in a recent column. Members of the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, who designed the first Merlion, made a valiant effort at building something of Singapore's heritage into their creation. 'From what I know, the fish tail represents Singapore's status as a port surrounded by water,' said Patricia Chan, a spokeswoman for Merlion's keepers at the government-run Sentosa Development Corp., or SDC. 'The lion head is based on a legend.' Chan referred to a local folk tale about 11th-century Prince Sang Nila Utama, who is credited with giving Singapore, originally known as Temasek, its current name. During an expedition on the then-undeveloped island, the prince sighted a lion and was moved to rename the place 'Singa Pura,' Sanskrit for 'Lion City.' Modern scholars, however, say lions could not have existed in the area and that the zoologically unschooled prince had probably seen a tiger or even one of the small, ferret-like civet cats common to the region. In an attempt to fix the new Merlion Tower's place in Singapores cultural heritage, SDC staff have been promulgating another tale. 'Legend has it that a majestic sea beast with a lion's head saved Singapore from a terrifying storm,' according to an SDC pamphlet. 'The Merlion, as the creature is now known, had risen from the sea and climbed to a rocky saddle on Sentosa. With its magical power, it subdued the overwhelming natural forces in a fierce battle and saved the people on the island.' SDC spokeswoman Chan admitted the Merlion 'legend' was in fact created just a few months ago by her staff. 'We had a consultant advising us on this project and he told us a legend would be helpful. So we just put our heads together and came up with this legend,' Chan said. The synthetic nature of the Merlion saga, along with its commercial theme park function and its high-tech showiness, have drawn rumbles of indignation from Singapore's usually complacent populace. 'Singaporeans have felt ambivalent towards the half fish-half lion symbol, man-made and contrived, as practically everything else here is,' columnist Koh wrote. 'I wouldn't want to think of Singapore's national icon as something that looks monstrous,' National University of Singapore geography lecturer Brenda Yeo said. 'The thing that bothers me about this Merlion is its size -- the fact that it really overpowers your vision is kind of uncalled for.' Businessman S.K. Tan, seeing the statue for the first time, agreed. 'I wouldn't take my kids to see this. It would scare them.' he said. The Merlion's top-heavy structure and intimidating scowl may well be characteristics most Singaporeans would prefer not to see in a national symbol. Although one of the world's greatest socio-economic success stories, much of Singapore's international reputation is based on its draconian laws to maintain peace and social order, which include censorship, flogging and execution. Some Singaporeans might feel the Merlion Tower's image fits in a little too well with a scathing essay on the prosperous high-tech island republic by American futurist William Gibson, in which he called Singapore 'Disneyland with the death penalty.'
