The Parang of Camelot (Research and thought process)

The story of The Parang of Camelot is parallel to the story of King Arthur The Sword in The Stone. Arthur was nurtured by Merlyn to be the king of Camelot and he eventually became the only who was able to pull the sword from the stone.

For more detailed story of King Arthur: Hero of Camelot 

Below is the story structure/stages of The Parang of Camelot:

Camelot Story Stages

Hence, the first main difference between my story and the legend of King Arthur is that my story would focus slightly more on the character who is parallel to King Arthur’s stepbrother, Sir Kay. The Parang of Camelot would also focus more on the relationship between the ‘King Arthur’ and ‘Sir Kay’,  and not to focus on the love betrayal of ‘Guinevere’ with ‘Lancelot’, a famous part of King Arthur story.

The parallel between The Parang of Camelot and the legend of King Arthur:

Parallel 1 Parallel 2

The idea of infusing King Arthur legend elements into a Singapore secret society setting is come from the Singapore’s 1960-1980 setting, where the streets were still unsafe for people to have a walk at night and the crime rate was still high.

The name of the rival gang Sah Lak is not just chosen because of its similarity with ‘Saxon’, but is also because of the existence of the real Singapore secret society called “Salakau“. This gang is still exist until now and it is one of the most formidable and violent gang in Singapore. Some incidents of murders or fights in this 21st century are suspected to be done by this gang. One of the murder that also inspired The Parang of Camelot is Downtown Street Murder in 2010. I was imagining what if a brother lost his brother in such a gangster fight. And this murder left me wondering what was the reason of the murderer gang to do such killing?

Then, the parang is a direct substitute for swords, and eventually the magical parang will be a substitute for Excalibur.

 

This assignment becomes much more interesting as it helps me to know more about the country i live in, Singapore. I only came to Singapore in 2011. Digging the news from 2010 made me feel that now, I am a little more Singaporean now, as I hardly bother to dig Indonesian past news.

It is very interesting to know that gang and gangsters do exist in Singapore as well, since Singapore is now a first-world country.

 


For the movie poster, both are inspired by some of real movie posters below:

41I9XGrG88L 170px-CamelotPoster Creative-Movie-Posters-9 p3532071_p_v7_af

I didn’t follow 100% any of the poster, but the rough idea of it comes from these posters.

The black background and dark atmosphere is not because the story is a horror or/and thriller, but more of because the story is, hopefully, heartfelt and of tragedy. The red color of the title and the parang is to foretell the bloodshed that will happen because of all the gang fights and the use of parang itself. The power given by the parang leads to the lost of loved ones and instability in the society.