Racial stereotypes in Singapore films: Commercial value and critical possibilities

Commercial films in Singapore present numerous instances of stereotypes that mimic an uncritical knowledge of social life, reinforcing this knowledge by further obscuring the unequal relations of power, repressions, tensions and contradictions that advanced capitalist-industrial society constantly endeavours to subsume (Tan 2008). The pleasures that stereotypes, especially racial stereotypes, give audiences make them primary materials in the production of lucrative light entertainment. Propelled by the profit motive of the culture industry, racial stereotypes are circulated and re-circulated in ways that naturalize ‘common-sense’ theories of racial hierarchies and practices of racial discrimination, mostly inherited, in Singapore’s case, from colonial ideologies of race. Through popular light entertainment, racist expressions in the private and public spheres are naturalized and even legitimized as audiences relate pleasurably to onscreen racial stereotypes in complex processes of subject formation.