la_vie_noire | (no subject)

Postcolonials Read Comics (And We’re Pissed).

Gail Simone depicted Singapore in Birds of Prey as a crime-riddled, totalitarian state inhabited by decadent drug lords. That’s not as bad as Marvel’s Principality of Madripoor, a parallel Singapore of authoritarianism and corruption eventually salvated by neo-colonial occupation; but that’s still better than in The Authority, where the fictional PRC destroyed the fictional Singapore in a secret nuclear attack.

Another interesting relationship between Singapore and superheroes: Ng Chin Han played the villainous Hong Kong accountant Lau in The Dark Knight.

[...] I want to see a Singaporean superhero genre that can amply offer critique on issues like race and gender politics in Singapore without relying on orientalist tropes or orientalised narratives of Asian political authority. [...] Asian political systems are either failed states or dictatorships, because the Orientals cannot be trusted to govern themselves. – A sign of how deeply we have internalised this discourse is evident in even homegrown criticism of the political system. I trust we can analyse and critique without resorting to such imagery, such portrayals.

Singaporean superheroes? I’ve been dreaming of this for years. If we postcolonials could take steampunk – with its intrinsic Victoriana – and subvert it, can we do the same for the superhero genre?

I could talk about the depiction of every non-western/developing nation in western comics. But I wouldn't end.

Threaded | Flat

If I could draw - ... and write and FINISH - a comic, I'd try for a Singaporean superhero comic or something.

:|

I get this little jolt of OMG YAY when I see Singapore mentioned in mainstream western media, and then I just hope it's actually just a MENTION and not... well, anything else.

Because when they do more than just mention it (like as in, stop-over-flight in Singapore or something) they WILL always go on to conflate Singapore with China and possibly North Korea with a nice delicious side of Rustic Generic Thatched Huts with Coconut Palms. And Paddi fields.