Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Silver Screen Reversals Of The Domino Theory: American Cold War Movies And The Re-Imagination Of British Experiences In Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how Hollywood was affected by the successful anticommunism of Britain and its local allies in Malaya and Singapore, victories that unfolded alongside Vietnam’s mounting crisis in the early 1960s. It shows that American movies of this era which portrayed the intertwining of US and British experiences in 1950s Malaya and 1940s Singapore conveyed an uneasy yet clear optimism about U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.