Operation snip full#

1 Peril of pin-table culture – by home minister. 6 Now culture clean-up may move on films, warns minister. 1 Banned! Morality sleuths seize 30 novels. 7 Chain story picture ban gets a welcome.

1 Ban on books: Minister names 54 publishers. 9 Magazine ban: Now 65 publications may not circulate in Singapore. 4 Lim warns of flower people, yellow culture.

Operation snip full#

2 If social revolution is to have full meaning… (1959, December 9). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Wheatley (Eds.), Management of success: The moulding of modern Singapore. Tan (Eds.), Lee’s lieutenants: Singapore’s old guard. The ‘Chinese-educated’ political vanguards: Ong Pang Boon, Lee Khoon Choy & Jek Yeun Thong (pp. Less ado about men with long hair: Officialdom closes half an eye to Seventies ban. Call no.: RSING 307.1216095957 BEY Moral fall: ‘We’re all to blame’. Yeo (Eds.), Beyond description: Singapore space historicity. At home in the worlds: Community and consumption in urban Singapore (p. In Singapore: The state and the culture of excess. Call no.: RSING 959.57 LEE- Permits of 8 papers withdrawn. Singapore: Times Editions: Singapore Press Holdings. The Singapore story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (p. The restriction on long hair was gradually relaxed in the 1980s, while the ban on jukeboxes was lifted only in 1990. Companies were also discouraged from hiring men with long hair, and employees who defied the hair rule had their employment terminated. With this campaign, men with long hair were served last at government offices as well as denied entry into the country. Īn anti-long hair drive, named Operation Snip Snip, was launched on 9 January 1972. In addition, several discoth èques were closed and had their liquor permits revoked. The government also frowned on the hippy movement and men with long hair, as these were associated with the drug culture, as well as permissive and deviant behaviour. The prohibitions extended to music: Radio Singapura pulled rock ‘n’ roll music off the air to feature more serious programmes with a Malayan emphasis. Chinese mutual aid associations and social clubs, where secret society members operated gambling dens, were also shut down. Jukebox and pin-table saloons were outlawed because they were gathering places for gangsters and youths. Īs part of the anti-yellow drive, obscene publications and films that depicted crime, violence, sex, nudity, racial prejudice as well as those glorifying colonialism were banned under the Undesirable Publications Ordinance and the Cinematograph Film Ordinance respectively.

The campaign against yellow culture was part of a social revolution to build a new Malayan nation. When the PAP came into power, it established, among its aims, a goal to create a wholesome Malayan culture and to eliminate yellow culture that threatened social discipline in Singapore. The local Chinese schools, which were influenced by the revolutionary events that were taking place in communist China at the time, had first promulgated the anti-yellow movement the movement aimed to purge from the city-state hedonistic foreign influences deemed to be corrupting Malayan youths and undermining the moral fabric of society. The government banned items and activities such as pornographic publications and films, striptease shows, jukebox dens, pin-table saloons, rock ’n’ roll music as well as long hair on men at the same time, it sought to promote healthy cultural activities that focused on forging a common Malayan culture. Spearheaded by then Minister for Home Affairs Ong Pang Boon and supported by the Ministry of Culture, the government launched a nationwide clamp-down on various aspects of Western popular culture that were seen as promoting a decadent or antisocial lifestyle. Although there were earlier attempts to eradicate yellow culture, the campaign launched by the government in 1959 was a sustained and extensive enterprise, easing only in the 1980s. The term “yellow culture” is a direct translation of the Chinese phrase huangse wenhua, which refers to decadent behaviour such as gambling, opium-smoking, pornography, prostitution, corruption and nepotism that plagued much of China in the 19th century. On 8 June 1959, the government led by the newly elected People’s Action Party (PAP) launched a campaign against yellow culture.