Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability (Critical Asian Cinemas)

Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability rethinks theory and style through films that bring the limits of traditional postcolonial frameworks into stark relief. Discover Singapore’s preoccupations with space, Yasmin Ahmad’s Malaysian soundscapes, and Indonesia’s investment in genre. These undertheorized films from geopolitically situated cultures narrate colonial identity within a distinctively Southeast Asian story. Gerald Sim’s immersive journey nurtures connections between narrative film, commercial video, art cinema, and experimental work with an abiding commitment to self-reflexive theorizing. The book culminates in a reflection on the ethics and politics of conducting knowledge work on world cinema. Sim navigates Singapore’s love of maps with the work of Tom Conley and Gilles Deleuze, surveys the city-state’s cartographic uncanny, before using the spatial inquisitions in filmmaker Tan Pin Pin’s “cinema of hiraeth” to appreciate Singapore’s territorial predispositions. The book then revisits a beloved Malaysian director's voice of modernity alongside Jean-Luc Nancy’s phenomenologies of listening and globalization. Original readings of Ahmad’s oeuvre dwell on the interplay between her ethnic cacophonies and imperfect subtitling. Finally, Sim focuses on the postcoloniality of Indonesia’s Cold War alliance with the United States to contemplate the overhang of authoritarian stability within its contemporary cinema’s generic recourse. Cover 1 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgments 14 Introduction 18 Expanding the Postcolonial Map 18 An Unfamiliar Postcoloniality 26 Touchstones in Postcolonial Film Studies: On Style and Practice 32 Strategies Old and New 37 Cold Wars and Methodological Debates 45 1. Postcolonial Spatiality 54 Singapore Maps its Cinema 54 Aerial Maps 64 Affective Colonial Maps 82 The Persistence of Colonial Spatiality 85 2. Reorienting Film History Spatially 98 Finding Singapore in The Impossibilities of Tan Pin Pin 107 The Vexed Images of Singapore’s New Wave 119 3. Postcolonial Cacophonies 142 Malaysia Senses the World 142 Nancian Soundscapes 147 Resonant Subjects 151 Postcolonial Globalism 157 4. Postcolonial Myths 170 Indonesia Americanizes Stability 170 A Brief History of Sublation 178 American Influence 186 The Road to Reformasi 195 Conclusion 212 A Look Forward for Southeast Asian Film Studies 212 Theorizing Edwin 214 What Theory and Southeast Asian Cinema Mean to Each Other 224 Bibliography 236 Index 252 List of Illustrations 9 Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability explores a geopolitically situated set of cultures negotiating unique relationships to colonial history. Singaporean, Malaysian, and Indonesian identities are discussed through a variety of commercial films, art cinema, and experimental work. The book discovers instances of postcoloniality that manifest stylistically through Singapore’s preoccupations with space, the importance of sound to Malay culture, and the Indonesian investment in genre. Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema explores a geopolitically situated set of cultures negotiating unique relationships to colonial history. These particular Singaporean, Malaysian, and Indonesian identities are discussed through a variety of commercial films, art cinema, and experimental work. It discovers instances of postcoloniality that manifest stylistically through Singapore's preoccupations with space, the importance of sound to Malay culture, and the Indonesian investment in genre Gerald Sim. Electronic Reproduction. Baltimore, Md Available Via World Wide Web.