Olivia Khoo

Slang images: on the ‘foreignness’ of contemporary Singaporean films

Abstract After having lain dormant for some 20 years during 1973 and 1991, the Singaporean film industry is experiencing a revival. Films produced since the early 1990s have been resolutely ‘local’ in their portrayals in an effort to ground this emergent cinematic modernity. Only a handful of these films have, however, received any international attention; most remain ‘too local’, ‘too colloquial’ to be exported further afield. This paper explores those visions or versions of the local presented in contemporary films from Singapore that simultaneously manufacture a brand of foreignness assimilable by international audiences. Through an overview of films from the revival period, this paper will show that the images that do travel successfully overseas are those that portray the dark side to Singapore’s road to economic modernization, the failed processes of an Asianized modernity. It is these images, representing one vision of an ‘authentic’ social reality, that is recognizable by international audiences in the context of previous successes by Asian films utilizing a shared form of (local) expression. My question is whether we can read these images as a particular kind of ‘slang’ – a vagabond expression that represents a filmic vernacular that also strategically invokes a cinematic modernity for the Singaporean film industry. This argument may extend to other (emergent) Asian cinemas that also participate in the production of this particular brand of foreignness. The paper will therefore provide some initial speculations towards the regionalization of cinema and ask whether such a move might be desirable and what its purpose might be.

Telling Stories: The Sacrificial Asian in Australian Cinema

This paper analyses the representation of Asians in four important Australian films produced in the last two and a half decades: Peter Weirs The Year of Living Dangerously, Stephen Wallaces Turtle Beach, Craig Lahiffs Heaven’s Burning and Sue Brooks’ Japanese Story. It argues that the cinematic encounter between Asians and Australians results in the sacrifice of the Asian character and that this is tied to the development of an Australian national identity and the modernity of a national cinema.

Bad Jokes, Bad English, Good Copy: Sukiyaki Western Django, or How the West Was Won

Abstract Miike Takashi’s Sukiyaki Western Django is a contemporary remake of Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti Western Django. In this updated Japanese version all of the characters speak English and there is a notable cameo appearance by Quentin Tarantino that references the continuous series of filmic exchanges that have taken place between Asia and the West, most notably in the context of action cinema. Rather than conceiving of the various movements and exchanges between the two films (and their predecessors) in terms of the search for an “original” or for the conceptualisation of good or bad copies, this paper focuses on the question of genre and what it can bring to a discussion of cross-cultural value in cinema. In particular, the paper explores what the recurring turn to Westerns in Asia reveals about the search for new frontiers of value and aesthetics in global cinema. From the serious to the self-conscious to the downright “bad” (and bad-ass) Western, Sukiyaki Western Django is a notable recent example of how the “Asian Western” both localises and globalises a peculiarly American genre, and at once de-values and re-values the “original”.

Bait 3D and the Singapore – Australia co-production agreement: from content to creativity through stereoscopic technology

The Media Development Authority’s ‘I Made it in Singapore’ campaign, launched in Cannes in 2006, encapsulates Singapore’s push to attract international collaborators in film and other media industries. With its clever dual meaning, ‘I Made it in Singapore’ reflects the continued emphasis on local content and Singapore-made productions, as well as expressing the gleeful exclamation of international producers who can claim to have had success in this growing Asian market. This article examines Singapore’s push towards international co-production agreements in film, focusing on the agreement with Australia as a case study. While Singapore is not unique in seeking out these bilateral ties for mutual benefit, there are implications specific to Singapore in terms of policy development for a small film industry. Since co-productions are regarded as ‘local content’ for the purposes of audiovisual regulation in Singapore as well as the partnering country, what are the benefits or hindrances for the Singaporean film industry of ‘expanding’ local content? Through an examination of the first Singapore–Australia co-produced film, Bait 3D, I argue that the relevant debate should be focused not on ‘content’ defined narrowly in representational terms, but on the politicization of creativity through Singapore’s development of 3D technology.

Framing Sinophone Cinemas

The concept of the’ sinophone’ has received critical traction in recent years as a robust theoretical tool to consider a range of Chinese language cultural productions that have emerged on the margins of China and the global Chinese diasporas. The concept was coined by Shu-mei Shin, in Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (2007) to respond to the expiration of the Chinese diaspora as second and third generations become more localized. Shih considers the unifying concept of the Chinese diaspora problematic because it is linked to China through the population category of the ‘huaqiao’/‘overseas Chinese’. This category affirms a Han-centric origin and excludes other ethnicities, languages and cultures; it also supports the Western racialized construction of the diaspora as foreign. ‘Chineseness’, she states, ‘is not an ethnicity but many ethnicities’ (Shih, 2007, p. 24). The Sinophone removes the emphasis on ethnicity and nationality, and instead highlights communities of Sinitic language cultures spoken and used outside China and on the peripheries of China and Chineseness: it is ‘a place-based, everyday practice and experience, and thus it is a historical formation that constantly undergoes transformation reflecting local needs and conditions’ (Shih, 2007, p. 30).

Missing water: imagination and empathy in Asian Australian ‘boat stories’ on screen

Australias cultural and political life is dominated by the image of the boat, most recently in the form of border anxiety concerning asylum seekers arriving by boat from the north. In this context, it is surprising to note the cinematic refrain of a literal absence of boats in Asian Australian ‘boat stories’ on screen, by which the visual iconography of the boat (as a physical object) is disavowed at the same time as it is underscored and over-exploited in the service of a certain kind of politicized cinema. This paper traces a trajectory from Steven Wallaces Turtle Beach (1992) to more recent film and television examples including Khoa Dos Mother Fish (2010) and the Special Broadcasting Services Go Back to Where You Came From (2011–2012). Regarding Asian Australian narratives as merely ‘boat stories’ disavows their wider significance by reducing them to personal histories, but these ‘boat stories without boats’ ask far more in terms of the imaginative investment required of spectators in order to generate empathy, in this case towards the plight of asylum seekers.

Australian cinema up in the air: Post-national identities and Peter Duncan's Unfinished Sky

This paper examines Peter Duncans film Unfinished Sky as an example of post-national Australian cinema. Addressing dominant frameworks in Australian film criticism that focus on the concept of the national, the paper argues that the ‘national’ has in fact been reconfigured in the cinema of the new millennium, placing it within a post-national or regional environment. In several recent Australian films there has been an increased engagement with the region, both in terms of the representation of regional areas outside Australia, such as Asia and the Middle East, as well as demonstrating a growing sense of openness to global influences and connections in remote or regional settings within the country. Addressing these various shifts, the paper questions how relevant is it to continue to define Australian cinema in terms of the ‘national’, as has long been dominant in Australian film scholarship, when aiming to take into account different races, ethnicities, and identities appearing on screen today. This is especially worth reconsidering since the demise of multiculturalism from the mid to late 1990s as an official cultural policy situated squarely within the framework of the national.

Regionalizing Asian Australian identities

The majority of essays in this collection arose out of the 3rd Asian Australian Identities (AAI3) conference held at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, from 10–11 November 2009. Building on the momentum of previous successful Asian Australian Identities conferences, AAI3 considered the importance of understanding Asian Australian identities and communities within regional and transnational contexts. In the early stages of planning the conference, I invited a group of distinguished academics in the field to participate in a plenary. I found myself inadvertently copied into their internal correspondence and the initial response was brief: ‘Are we still talking about identities? Aren’t we done with that?’ The validity of the conference theme was clearly still in doubt. The essays in this special issue contribute to a broader debate about whether we still need to talk about identities in general, and Asian Australian identities in particular, and what the ‘region’ has to do with it. In her introduction to the seminal collection, Alter/Asians: Asian-Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture, Ien Ang (2000, xiii) noted that for as long as the White Australia Policy was in existence, and even beyond it, Australia as a nation ‘defined itself explicitly away from its regional Asian context, clinging desperately to its uneasy status as a far-flung outpost of Europe’. While the shift to a notion of Australia being ‘in Asia’, or of being ‘Asianised’ (Ang and Stratton 1996) gained currency in political, economic, and academic circles in the first half of the 1990s, the scope of the representation of Asian Australian identities in cultural and social terms was still very limited. A decade on from Ang et al.’s collection, the discourse has not so much shifted, but found different actors and enunciators. The region Asia has gained renewed prominence because of the voices emerging from the region itself. ‘Asians’ as a collective is being touted by Asians themselves (as opposed to an external designation as ‘Orientals’), as part of a broader emergence of Asia as a regional entity (Sakai 2000; Chen 2010). While the term ‘Asian’ hides many inequities, it also has the potential to function as the marker for a common identity where individuals can find strength in that commonality (Ang 2010, 130). In the Australian context the term ‘region’ also has a different meaning, which was foregrounded with the conference being held in Western Australia. Geographically proximate to Southeast Asia, questions of location and distance within the State itself were at the forefront. In holding the 2009 conference in Western Australia, we were particularly mindful of the rhetoric of the rise of ‘Asia’ which has sustained much of the State’s (and nation’s) boom years. From distanciation to fascination and engagement, Australia’s relationship with Asia continues to inform the culture and politics of the nation. At the same

Regional approaches to trafficking in women in South-East Asia: the role of national human rights institutions and the new ASEAN human rights body

This article examines historical efforts that have been made to address the issue of trafficking in women in South-East Asia, with a focus on regional approaches to the problem. In light of recent political developments in the subregion, the article will also assess what impact, if any, the introduction of a new ASEAN human rights body late in 2009 will have on the human rights of trafficked persons. The article argues that, in the absence of established regional mechanisms, national human rights institutions continue to remain key bodies for the promotion and protection of trafficked women in ASEAN.

Singapore, Sinophone, Nationalism: Sounds of Language in the Films of Tan Pin Pin

Arguably Singapore’s leading contemporary documentary film-maker, Tan Pin Pin has made over a dozen films, the majority focusing exclusively on the subject of Singapore.1 The director herself is Chinese Singaporean but she does not make films explicitly about (Chinese) ethnicity or predominantly in a Chinese language. The subject of Tan’s documentaries is primarily Singapore, and only secondarily (if at all) about Chineseness. Despite this, Tan’s cinema is valuable for thinking through the limits of Chinese cinema, which have hitherto been defined almost exclusively in terms of ethnicity and language. By using the nascent framework of the Sinophone to consider Tan’s cinema, I aim to articulate a relationship between cinematic renderings of Singapore nationalism and the notion of Singapore as a Sinophone settler colony.2 Although Singapore can be considered part of the Sinophone network, its official and unofficial language policies and practices mean that it is only ‘Sinophone’ in particular ways and at particular times.