An article in The Straits Times in May 1953 outlined the Malayan Film Unit’s plans for the coronation. ‘The Malayan Film Unit will give the celebrations the greatest newsreel coverage ever known in this country’, it stated, ‘seven mobile camera teams will tour Malaya, filming celebrations in towns and kampongs for a Coronation cinema newsreel’. Tom Hodge, the head of the MFU, offered further details. ‘In her last Christmas broadcast, the Queen asked her subjects to pray for her’, he began, ‘so we plan to show Muslim and Catholic congregations at prayer in Malaya. A camera team will go deep into the jungle to show Malay, Chinese, Indian and European members of the security forces toasting the health of Her Majesty’. Hodge sought, in particular, to represent a united, multiracial Malaya: ‘There will be shots of the Fijians and East Africans to show this is a common fight shared by many nationalities’ (Straits Times, 21 May 1953, 5).

The article further explained that ‘the 30 minute newsreel will be shown throughout Malaya and South East Asia within two weeks of the Coronation. It will be sent to newsreel companies abroad and will reach a world audience exceeding 100 million people’. The article also noted that footage of the Malayan celebrations would be sent to London, where BBC producers were constructing a Coronation film showing the celebrations in 55 countries (Straits Times, 21 May 1953, 5).

The Straits Times, which had recently described the MFU productions as ‘a dull dribble of official blurb’, was full of praise for the MFU’s coverage of the Coronation when it played in Singapore in June. ‘It is an excellent piece of filmmaking – good continuity and commentary, sharp close-ups and interesting subjects’, it noted, ‘there are elephants and clowns, dragons and dancers all linked into one great Coronation parade, and the cheers of the crowd and the crash of the cymbals have been faithfully recorded’ (Straits Times, 21 June 1953, 13). Further coverage was filmed by the Shaw Brothers, who released ‘Singapore’s Coronation Celebrations’, while British productions, such as Pathé’s Elizabeth is Queen and the Technicolor film, A Queen is Crowned, played extensively throughout the region. James Chapman noted that A Queen is Crowned was the year’s most successful film at the British box office and ‘a popular attraction throughout the British Commonwealth’ (Chapman, 2002, 82).

Cultural historian Wendy Webster outlined the prominent role the Empire played within popular discourses surrounding the Coronation, and suggested that the occasion marked a re-imagining of the Empire as a ‘multiracial community – now routinely named Commonwealth…Embellished and popularised through new heroes, the Coronation story of Empire/Commonwealth was one of youth, optimism and unity’. In her Christmas address in 1953, the Queen spoke of a new Commonwealth that ‘bears no resemblance to the Empires of the past’. ‘The United Kingdom is an equal partner with many other proud and independent nations’, she continued, ‘and is leading forward yet other still backward nations to the same goal’. The Coronation provided an opportunity to reaffirm Britain’s faltering position as a world power, through the traditional imagery and pageantry of the Royal family, yet in its attempt to maintain Britain’s position as an international force, Britain was increasingly reconfigured not as a dominant imperial power, but as a partner within this ‘re-imagined’ Empire (Webster, 2005, 92, 93).

Webster also notes the presence of Malaya within this united imperial identity, observing that ‘even on-going colonial wars did little to disrupt the idea of loyalty and unity’ (Webster, 2005, 103). Coronation Week, which ran from 30 May, was promoted as an opportunity for Malayans to demonstrate their ‘unaffected enthusiasm’ for the Empire, with The Straits Times exclaiming that ‘officialdom has been dazed with the enthusiasm and spontaneity of the celebrations’ as the illuminations ‘blazoned forth Singapore’s pledge of loyalty to her Queen from a million people of all communities’ (Straits Times, 8 June 1953, 7). However, despite the colonial government’s widely disseminated Coronation propaganda (including 90,000 pictures of the Queen), there was noticeable opposition to the Coronation celebrations within Malaya (Harper, 1998, 199). As an example, Inche Abdul Aziz, who was one of three Malay journalists invited by the Colonial Office to witness the Coronation in London and a member of the Federal Legislative Council, wrote a largely critical account of the ceremony for Utusan Malayu, the most prominent Malay language newspaper. Aziz noted that Nehru looked ‘bored’, that Churchill sat down when he should have been standing and noted in another piece that some of the Malay Sultans attending the Coronation feast had not observed the Muslim fast. On his return General Templer summoned Aziz and called him ‘a rat, and a rotten journalist whose name stinks in South-East Asia’ (Purcell, 1954, 238).