Review | Graphic novel ‘A Mild Case of Mass Hysteria’ offers a peek into Singapore’s history
The graphic novel 'A Mild Case of Mass Hysteria' explores Singapore's 1967 Koro epidemic through the lens of three men facing psychological crises. The book uses the historical event as a metaphor to examine themes of masculinity, social order, and the impact of colonial history.
Why it matters
The work provides a cultural critique of historical social anxieties and the fragility of societal structures in a post-colonial context.
In his 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow , Thomas Pynchon writes about, among others, a man named Tyrone Slothrop. Slothrop has many sexual encounters in London, and each place at which he does is struck by V2 rockets launched by Nazi Germany after a few days.
A Mild Case of Mass Hysteria , a new graphic novel by Singaporean writer Felix Cheong and illustrated by Ritwick Roy and Riddhi Trivedi, starts in a similar place. It is 1967 and Singapore is creaking to life under the weight of history. But then there is the Koro epidemic, a real event, and Cheong, Roy, and Trivedi are on their way to a rollocking tale that uses sexual and bodily panics as metaphors to make sense of the forces of war and empire, which are otherwise too large to dramatise directly.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in