Coolie Boys Diving for Coins positions a scene, popularised in early film generally, within a distinctly colonial context. As with similar films, it uses attractions that, as Joe Kember argued, ‘were more broadly characteristic of several early genres, among them the intriguing spectacle of a chaotic flurry of limbs projected on-screen, the prevailing “Mischievous boy” and racial stereotypes (derived in part from contemporary conventions in the music halls)’