Sonic Familiarity and Unfamiliarity: The Politics of Sounds and Transregional Survival of Cantonese Cinema in the Early to Mid-twentieth Century

Abstract This article explores how “sound” converges with the transnational production and circulation of Cantonese films in the context of global Chinese diaspora in the early to mid-20th century. First I interrogate the history of sound cinema and delineate how the Shaw Brothers, originally from Shanghai, used Cantonese sound films as an expansion strategy to break out of market competitions, establishing a production-distribution network of Cantonese media in Hong Kong and Malaya. This production-distribution network has long-lasting influences: this network nurtured what I call sonic familiarity of Cantonese among Sinophone audiences in Southeast Asia, even these audiences may not necessarily speak Cantonese. Turning to the rise of Cantonese films engaging with Southeast Asia in the late 1950s, I demonstrate how sonic familiarity functions as resilience through two films. By examining Malaya Love Affair (1954) and Blood Stains the Love Valley (1957), I trace the ways that Cantonese cinema negotiated its survival through the sonic imagination of Malaya, where the mobility of Cantonese sound met its limits. These films illuminate the tensions between sonic familiarity and unfamiliarity: when familiar sounds sought new resonance across regions, they risked distortion and mistranslation revealing the politics of sound that sustained the transregional resilience.