Cinemagoing in Kuala Lumpur: Memories, Movies, and the Multiethnic City, 1970–1979

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This study draws on popular press and oral histories to examine moviegoing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the 1970s. It interrogates the memories of cinema and their relationship with the conditions of life in the burgeoning metropolis and makes explicit connections between ethnicity—or, more precisely, linguistic proficiencies—as forces structuring the experiences of moviegoing. Many participants' memories oscillate around American films and stars, attesting to the global appeal of Hollywood at the time. Ultimately, if cinematic sites were entrenched in racial dynamics of the city, they were also physical manifestations of their leakiness, of penetrability between diasporic affiliations.