Ask foreign visitors to Myanmar what literary works they associate with the country and the chances are that most will cite Rudyard Kipling’s iconic 1890 poem “Mandalay,” or George Orwell’s 1934 novel “Burmese Days.” Yet, many other Western publications have helped shape Myanmar in the public imagination. These include children’s stories, plays, travelogues and memoirs.
Most of these works have painted a mental picture of Myanmar as a remote land of golden pagodas, gilded Buddhas and picturesque villages. The latter were invariably populated by demure “Burma girls” waiting for their European lovers. In Myanmar’s steaming jungles, dacoits (or bandits) lurked among a menagerie of exotic wildlife, all waiting to attack anyone who crossed their paths.
Increasingly, scholars are examining how Western literature encouraged such perceptions and what attitudes flowed from them. One genre that is usually overlooked in this regard is pulp fiction. Particularly during the 1920s and 1930s, stories in popular magazines promoted an Orientalist view of Myanmar that emphasized its “otherness” and contributed to some fanciful notions about the country and its people.
The term “pulp fiction” comes from the cheap magazines published during the first half of the 20th century that were printed on low quality (pulp) paper. They had colorful covers, contained short stories and novelettes, and were aimed at a mass audience. At their peak, during the 1930s, there were over 150 separate titles, produced mainly in the United States. The most successful pulps sold hundreds of thousands of copies per issue.
At a time of rising literacy, and before televisions became common, these magazines were popular among boys and working-class men. Pulps exposed them to people, places and action of kinds they could never experience themselves. To quote one observer, the “mix of fantasy, horror, mystery and suspense, punctuated by episodes of torture, sadism, sex and other risque elements” offered them an escape from their everyday lives.
Please click here to read the full “Colonial-era pulp fiction portrays ‘technicolor’ Myanmar” article in the Nikkei Asian Review by Griffith Asia Institute Adjunct Associate Professor, Dr Andrew Selth.
