Not so Foreign: the Case of Saint Jack

This chapter develops on the topic of foreignness in Singapore films and discusses the ways that Singapore has been depicted in films made outside the country, especially by Hollywood. It addresses the tendency to polarise local- and foreign-made films as inside/outside perspectives and argues that they all perform a Singapore that is equally foreign regardless of where they were made. The chapter also problematises the tendency to limit the study of national cinema to locally-made films by making the case for how a Hollywood production like Saint Jack (Peter Bogdanovich, 1979) can be considered a Singapore film.