Nanyang popular culture on Singapore television (1963–1979)

This essay explores the film-to-television evolution of the Nanyang popular cultural imaginary between Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1960s and 1970s. Not having the capacity to produce films or television serials, Singapore was heavily reliant on Hong Kong films to fill its airtime, and in so doing, gave the diasporic imaginary projected by films a second lease of life on television. Television was a more capacious medium than film—a wider range of popular cultural performances were featured on its variety shows. The more literary and artistic (wenyi) songs surprisingly sold as well if not better than their liuxing counterparts. Combined, television and popular music remade the Nanyang popular cultural imaginary for Singapore, as the radical left’s Malayanisation cultural vision became increasingly marginalised from the reality of Singapore’s independence and its development in the capitalistic world.