Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema
Title
Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema
Subtitle
Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability
Price
€ 124,00 excl. VAT
ISBN
9789463721936
Format
Hardback
Number of pages
254
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.6 x 23.4 cm
Also available as
eBook PDF - € 123,99
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments
Introduction: Expanding the Postcolonial Map
An Unfamiliar Postcoloniality
Touchstones in Postcolonial Film Studies: On Style and Practice
Strategies Old and New
Cold Wars and Methodological Debates
Chapter 1: Postcolonial Spatiality: Singapore Maps its Cinema
Aerial Maps
Affective Colonial Maps
The Persistence of Colonial Spatiality
Chapter 2: Reorienting Film History Spatially
Finding Singapore in the Impossibilities of Tan Pin Pin
The Vexed Images of Singapore's New Wave
Chapter 3: Postcolonial Cacophonies: Malaysia Senses the World
Nancian Soundscapes
Resonant Subjects
Postcolonial Globalism
Chapter 4: Postcolonial Myths: Indonesia Americanizes Stability
A Brief History of Sublation
American Influence
The Road to Reformasi
Conclusion: A Look Forward for Southeast Asian Film Studies
Theorizing Edwin
What Theory and Southeast Asian Cinema Mean to Each Other
Bibliography
Index

Reviews and Features

"Sharing a critical interest in examining the "national" in Southeast Asian cinemas, Postcolonial Hangups and Southeast Asia on Screen [Amsterdam University Press, 2020] make use of distinctly different methodologies and focus on diverse geopolitical regions and their cinemas. The two books expand the limits of Southeast Asian, Asian, national, and postcolonial cinema as well as lend insights to film aesthetics. Both books have incorporated valuable and new perspectives with much-appreciated historical depths. Invested readers will surely benefit from the vast array of film texts examined as well as the knowledge and critical perspectives offered by these specialists of the field."
- Min Hui Yeo, Global Storytelling 1.2 (2022)

"Sim explores how the psychic, spatial, and political resonances of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia's colonialization extends into the cinemas of recent decades and articulates with the emergent pressures of global capitalism. [...] The poetics of 'space', 'sound', and 'stability' are the three key ideas around which Sim structures the book—and they are indeed rich and appropriate frameworks. Each of the four chapters showcases Sim's conceptual interventions via illuminating analysis, an extensive filmography, and gripping writing."
- Nadine Chan, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Volume 94, Part 2, No. 321, December 2021

"An absolutely fascinating and illuminating read, Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema is a most welcome addition to the vital body of work on world cinemas. Written with a warm and welcoming prose, it brings alive as-yet underappreciated films from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in an affective, even atmospheric, manner. What stands out most is the carefully considered and commendably self-aware engagement of these South East Asian cinemas with theory. The result of this is an enjoyable book which offers the opportunity to shake up accepted ways of thinking about what theory can tell us about postcolonial cinema. The findings of this remarkable book are of pertinence for scholars looking to decolonise thinking around the globe. As such its resonance will undoubtedly be felt for many years to come."
- David Martin-Jones, author of Cinema Against Doublethink (2018), Deleuze and World Cinemas (2011), Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity (2006).

"Wide-ranging and comprehensive, Gerald Sim's study at the intersection of postcolonial theory and politics exposes gaps and chasms with a nuanced eye. His close readings capture important cultural ironies, and he applies theories of film sound and space to enlightening effect. Anyone with an interest in Southeast Asian cinema needs to read this book."
- Tan Pin Pin, director of Singapore GaGa (2005) and In Time to Come (2017).

''[...]the book offers a significant contribution to the growing field of Southeast Asian film studies. In distinguishing the unique postcolonial poetics within the differing industries, filmmakers, and topics of these three countries, Sim has succeeded in a task that eludes many, and identified a specific angle through which to begin expanding the umbrella of postcolonial film studies. In the end, Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema manages to tie its many threads together and elevate what was previously a relatively obscure district to the forefront of critical reflection in postcolonial studies.''
- Mary Jane Ainslie, Pacific Affairs September 2023, V.96, no.3

Gerald Sim

Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema

Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability

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.
Author

Gerald Sim

Gerald Sim is an Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University, the author of The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema (2014), and Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia in 2016-2017.