The anti-comics movement was a global cultural phenomenon in the 1950s and 1960s. The anti-comics movement in Singapore offers an interesting case study, as it was part of the anti-yellow culture campaign first initiated by anti-colonial groups in the 1950s and later by the government when Singapore gained independence in the 1960s. By examining cartoonists complex and often conflicting response to societal mores, this chapter examines the social anxiety that accompanies new norms and changes in newly independent states in the period of decolonization in the 1960s. It also examines the details of the campaign and the actual cartoons produced reveals contradictions faced by newly independent states in the area of culture and its popular expressions. The anti-yellow culture campaign in Singapore was first taken up by left-leaning anti-colonialists such as writers and students. Cartooning in Singapore could be traced back to the early 1900s when Chinese newspapers started using cartoons to comment on social and political issues.

Chinese-medium schools as mainstream education in Singapore arguably flourished for seven decades in the last century. Singapore has stood out among various plural societies to emerge from European colonisation of Southeast Asia for having an ethnic Chinese population as the majority, constituting three-quarters of its population. Since independence, Singapore, guided by an ideology of pragmatism with a primary goal in economic growth, has emphasised the importance of English for its utilitarian value in science and technology that provide citizens with employment. Mandarin supposedly became a unifying language and heritage marker for Singapore’s Chinese community in 1979, when Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese were in contrast rejected for public usage. Schools as educational institutions anywhere play central roles in social mobilisation and transformation of communities, roles that cannot be reduced to that of an economic system, as education theorist Michael Apple argues.