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Cinemas and Censorship in Colonial Malaya*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Rex Stevenson
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Extract

By the mid-1920s, the spread and popularity of a Hollywood dominated cinema in Malaya, and elsewhere in the Empire, was causing the British considerable concern. The motion picture or cinematograph (as it was then called) was a rapidly growing entertainment and educative phenomenon that transcended barriers of literacy and language in its appeal and was freely accessible to all sections of colonial society. In the words of a contemporary, “it taught the mass of uneducated Asiatics about the white race.” In Malaya, the Government had acted to place controls on the cinema soon after its introduction but by the opening years of the 1920s there was a growing number of travellers and expatriate critics who felt that the authorities had not yet realized the seriousness of the ‘threat’ posed by the cinema and had not acted with enough purpose in imposing safeguards. To emerge as the leading campaigner on the subject was Sir Hesketh Bell, (late Governor of Mauritius) who visited Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies in 1926, on a private tour of the Far East.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 5 , Special Issue 2: The Centenary of British Intervention in Malaya , September 1974 , pp. 209 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1974

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References

1 This article examines the British reaction to the growth of the cinema as a social force in the Straits Settlements and the FMS during the 1920s and 1930s. It is concerned with the attempts of officialdom to come to terms with a new and powerful social phenomenon rather than with providing a detailed account of the cinema itself.

2 Onraet, R., Singapore: A Police Background, London, 1947, p. 16Google Scholar. Onraet served as a police officer in Singapore from 1907 to 1939, rising to the rank of Inspector-General in 1937.

3 The Times, 18 September 1926, enclosed in Amery to Guillemard, Confidential, 11 December 1926, CO 273/533. Sir Hesketh Bell, GCMG, was a former Governor of Uganda, Northern Nigeria, Leeward Islands and Mauritius. After his tour of the Malay Archipelago and Indochina in 1926, he wrote Foreign Colonial Administration in the Far East, London, 1928, which repeats much of his Times article in a substantial section on the cinema on pp. 115–124Google Scholar. He became known as something of an authority on the subject and was frequently cited by contemporaries. He later served on the 1930 Colonial Films Committee, submitting a minority report on the subject of the cinema in Africa. See footnote 81 below.

4 The Times, 18 September 1926.

5 Ibid.

6 Gibson, A., The Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, London, 1928, pp. 134–136.Google Scholar

7 Wheeler, L. R., The Modern Malay, London, 1928, p. 174Google Scholar. Wheeler, a Fellow of the Royal Empire Society, had lived in Malaya for seven years up to 1927. His short chapter on the cinematograph can be found on pp. 173–175.

8 The Times, 18 September 1926.

9 Bilainkin, G., Hail Penang, London, 1932, pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

10 The Times, 18 September 1926.

11 A. Gibson, p. 135.

12 L. R. Wheeler, p. 175.

13 Huxley, Aldous, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, London, 1926, pp. 198–200.Google Scholar

14 The Times, 18 September 1926.

15 Stamfordham to Amery, 19 September 1926, in Amery to Guillemard, Confidential, 11 December 1926, CO 273/533.

16 Ibid.

17 Minute by Beckers, 23 September 1926, on Stamfordham to Amery, 19 September 1926, CO 273/533.

18 Ibid. The complaints had followed the banning of the films “Moon of Israel” and “Owl Bob.”

19 Ibid.

20 Amery to Stamfordham, 24 September 1926, CO 273/533.

21 Ibid.

22 Amery to Guillemard, 11 December 1926, CO 273/533.

23 See Proceedings of the Imperial Conference, 1926, in particular the Thirteenth Report of the General Economic Sub-Committee, ”Exhibition Within the Empire of Empire Cinematograph Films,” Cmd. 2768 (1926).

24 Amery to Guillemard, 11 December 1926, CO 273/533.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 This earlier correspondence between Guillemard and the Colonial Office is referred to in CO Clerk Becker's minute of 23 September 1926, on Stamfordham to Amery, 19 September 1926, CO 273/533. The original correspondence does not appear to have been filmed for the CO 273 series and I have been unable to locate it.

28 See later references to the Ordinance in Proceedings of the Straits Settlements Legislative Council, 12 December 1927.

29 See Minute by Becker, 23 September 1926, on Stamfordham to Amery, 19 September 1926, CO 273/533, and “Film Censorship in British India,” International Review of Educational Cinematography, I 1929, 574Google Scholar. See also the chapter on India in Hunnings, Neville M., Film Censors and the Law, London, 1967, pp. 223–247.Google Scholar

30 See The Directory and Chronicle of China, Japan, Straits Settlements, FMS, Etc., for 1923 and 1937.

31 Ibid.

32 Proceedings of the FMS Federal Council, 28 February 1927.

33 Ibid., 28 February and 17 March 1927. A copy of the Enactment can also be found attached to Guillemard to Amery, Confidential, 8 August 1927, CO 273/541.

34 Ibid., 28 February 1927.

35 The “Official Censor” was defined in the Enactment as the “person appointed by the Chief Secretary” of the FMS but was in practice the same Official Censor appointed by the Colony and located in Singapore. After 1927, the FMS contributed a part of his salary.

36 Malaya Tribune, 1925 (n.f.d.); quoted in Wheeler, L. R., p. 174.Google Scholar

37 Morning Post, 10 October 1927, enclosed in Guillemard to Amery, 8 August 1927, CO 541. The article names “The Rat,” “The Return of the Rat” and “Hindle Wakes” among the films banned.

38 Ibid. See also Minute by Beckers of 23 September 1926, on Amery to Guillemard, 11 December 1926, CO 273/533; Minute by Vernon on 24 May 1937, on Shenton Thomas to Colonial Office, 24 April 1937, CO 273/633; and Weait, R. H., “The Orient and the Cinema,” British Malaya, March 1934, 231–232, 245.Google Scholar

39 Manchester Guardian, 1925 (n.f.d.) quoted in L.R. Wheeler, pp. 174–175.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid. See also footnote 85 below.

42 Guillemard to Amery, 8 August 1927, CO 273/541.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Minute by Sir G. Grindle of 13 September 1927, on Guillemard to Amery, 8 August 1927, CO 273/541.

47 Minute by Ellis of 13 September 1927, on Guillemard to Amery, 8 August 1927, CO 273/541.

48 Proceedings of the Straits Settlements Legislative Council, 10 October 1927.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid., 2 July 1928.

52 Ibid., 26 March 1928.

53 Ibid., 28 October 1929 and 9 December 1929; Proceedings of the FMS Federal Council, 4 November 1929. See FMS Enactment No. 23 of 1929, “The Cinematograph Films (Control) (Amendment) Enactment, 1929,” in FMS Government Gazette, 31 January 1930.

54 See the following FMS Government Gazettes, Supplement for January-June 1927; 26 April 1929; 4 July 1930; and 28 August 1931, reporting the establishment of the Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Pahang Cinema Vigilance Committees respectively.

55 L R. Wheeler, p. 174.

56 R. Onraet, p. 16.

57 Upton Close [Hall, Josef Washington], The Revolt of Asia: The End of the White Man's Dominance, Sydney, 1927, p. 32Google Scholar. Hall was lecturer in Pacific Asian Life and Politics, University of Washington, and co-author of an Outline History of China.

58 G. Bilainkin, p. 63.

59 This is an estimate based on the immediate post-war figures and references to the availability of the cinema in contemporary writings. See Ginsberg, Norton and Roberts, Chester F. (Jr.), Malaya, Seattle, 1958, p. 185.Google Scholar

60 Proceedings of the FMS Federal Council, October 1930.

61 Contemporary accounts variously list the price of stall seats at between five and forty cents.

62 G. Bilainkin, p. 58.

63 N. Ginsberg and C. F. Roberts, p. 185.

64 G. Bilainkin, p. 58.

65 Ibid., p. 61.

66 Roff, William R., The Origins of Malay Nationalism, Kuala Lumpur, 1967, p. 227.Google Scholar

67 Sim, Katharine, Malayan Landscape, London, 1946, pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., p. 35.

69 G. Bilainkin, p. 63.

70 The Times, 18 September 1926.

71 G. Bilainkin, pp. 64–65.

72 R. Onraet, p. 17.

73 Proceedings of the FMS Federal Council, 28 February 1927.

74 Ibid.

75 Report of the Colonial Films Committee, July 1930, Cmd. 3630, p. 15.

76 Ibid., p. 3. Mr. H. Snell M.P., replaced Sir William Brass as Chairman in July 1929.

77 Ibid., p. 4. Besides Winstedt, Malaya was also indirectly represented on the Committee for a time by Mr. D. Beatty, an ex-MCS officer.

78 Ibid., pp. 5–8.

79 Ibid., pp. 8–12.

80 Ibid., pp. 12–15.

81 Ibid., pp. 15–17.

82 Annual Report of the FMS, 1926 and 1930.

83 Ibid., 1930–31 and 1938.

84 Report of the Colonial Films Committee, p. 32. See also pp. 27–31.

85 Ibid., pp. 32–35. Also attached to Passfield's despatch was the pamphlet of the British Board of Film Censors, “Censorship in Great Britain,” and an extract from the Report of British Films Censors for 1929. These two documents set out under headings such as “Religious, Political, Social, Military, Sex, Crime and Cruelty,” lists of incidents and themes which were “regarded as prohibitive on the screen.” The following rulings were relevant to the Colonies: “Subjects which are calculated to wound the susceptibilities of foreign peoples, and especially of our fellow subjects of the British Empire”; “Stories and scenes which are calculated and possibly intended to ferment social unrest and discontent”; “Stories showing any antagonistic or strained relations between white men and the coloured population of the British Empire, especially with regard to the question of sexual intercourse, moral or immoral, between individuals of different races”; “White men in a state of degradation amidst Far Eastern and native surroundings”; and “British Officers and Forces shown in a disgraceful light.”

86 Ibid., p. 35.

87 After World War II, the outbreak of the (communist) ‘Emergency’ in 1948 led to the imposition of very strict film censorship in Malaya. See N. Ginsberg and C. F. Roberts, p. 186. For a re-opening of the discussion on the cinema in Malaya after 1930, see the following three articles which run in consecutive issues of the journal, British Malaya: A. J. W. Harloff, “The Influence of the Cinema on Oriental Peoples,” February 1934 213–216; R. H. Weait, “The Orient and the Cinema”, March 1934, 231–232, 245; and George Bilainkin, “More about the Cinema and the Orient”, April 1934, 263. For a brief and amusing discussion based on the above three British Malaya articles, see William R. Roff, “Colonies, Communism and Clara Bow,” Journal of the Historical Society, University of Malaya, I, 1,1960, 57–59.

88 Minute by R. V. Vernon, 24 May 1937, on Shenton Thomas to Secretary of State, 24 April 1937, CO 273/633. While commenting on proposed seditious literature legislation, Vernon wrote: “I remember they [Straits Government] used to be very anxious to prohibit the reception of wireless messages from Shanghai or Nanking which were supposed to be likely to corrupt the political mind of the Malay. [Adding] A film well known over here (“The Ghost Train”) was prohibited in Malaya and I went to see it at the request of the firm … It certainly struck me that its prohibition was altogether ridiculous but the Governor upheld the action of his Censor in banning the film in Singapore.”