Blurring the colonial binary : turn-of-the-century transnational entertainment in Southeast Asia

Blurring the Colonial Binary assesses the development of cinema
in colonial Southeast Asia, and how it disrupted notions of racial
hierarchies. The book charts the development of cinema, and its
distribution and exhibition, from a transnational and colonial
perspective. The first decade of cinema in Southeast Asia, particularly
Singapore, is used as a point of reference from where issues such as
imperialism, colonial discourse, nation- building, ethnicity, gender,
and race is examined. I demonstrate the interconnectedness of
Southeast Asia, and its constructed national borders, by examining
the transnational itinerant amusement companies that performed in
the region. These entertainment companies, in turn, were dependent
on imperial networks, in terms of trade and communication systems,
which facilitated their movement between territories. Cinematic
venues negotiated segregated, colonial racial politics by creating a
common social space where people from different ethnic and social
backgrounds gathered.