Lung Kong’s Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow : the 1967 riots and the politics of cultural production in the Hong Kong film industry

Screen ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-74
Author(s):  
Tom Cunliffe
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Film Industry

scholarly journals Masculine Performance in Hong Kong Crime Films from Post-Bruce to the 2000s

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Gabriel F. Y. Tsang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Action Films ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Crime Film ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Bruce Lee ◽  
Chinese Masculinity ◽  
Artistic Images

Masculinity, in Lacan’s sense, is an imagination. To specifically theorise Chinese masculinity, Kam Louie examined the elements of wen (cultural attainment) and wu (martial valour) rendered through historical or artistic images, and Song Geng and Derek Hird guide the discussions about Chinese manhood represented in everyday life. With a Marxist perspective, Lo Kwai Cheung illustrated the dissolvability of Chinese masculinity under international capitalism. With reference to Aristotle, it is supposed that Chinese masculinity, similar to ‘tragicity’ in nature, can be represented through imitating actions and hence be perceived. Based on Aristotle’s understanding, we can regard actions as ‘iterable’ media (like Derrida’s understanding of written texts) which engender performances according to the genealogy of quantitative mimesis. Integrating theoretical discussions with a chronological approach, my full paper will go through following points in order to summarise the changes in Hong Kong crime films from the post-Bruce Lee era to the 2000s: (1) Hong Kong crime film inherited the martial side of masculinity from action films and became a popular genre since A Better Tomorrow was well received in the mid-1980s. (2) Many directors diversified the interpretation of crime in the late 1980s and the 1990s, but remained a focus on the strength, nimbleness and boldness of men. (3) After the decline of Hong Kong film industry for several years, Infernal Affairs’s success renewed the representation of manhood. (4) From the 2000s to now, male characters in crime films are preferably intelligent and wisely-romantic, like the fragile scholar in ancient China. (5) While globalisation seems to be eliminating the Chineseness of Chinese masculinity, I argue that geographical specificity and different speed of cultural development lead to the impossibility of synchronic masculine similarity. (6) Through a brief discussion concerning Hollywood’s adaptation of Hong Kong films, I argue that local masculinity is not transformable.  

scholarly journals Hong Kong as Alternative Sinophone Articulation: Translation and Literary Cartography in Dung Kai-Cheung’S Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 771-780
Author(s):  
Long Chao
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Literary Cartography ◽  
Important Position

Abstract Following the 2014 Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong society has witnessed a series of fights between social (youth) activists and its Special Administrative Government (SAR). What was at stake really boils down to the issue of Hong Kong’s self-positioning vis-a-vis the rising economic and political strength of Mainland China. This issue is certainly nothing new, given that most cultural discourses in the 1990s, both within and outside Hong Kong, have focused on the city’s postcolonial status after the handover. This article therefore proposes to approach such an issue from the perspective of the Sinophone to bring to light how cultural production in Hong Kong can generate alternative thinking. It considers specifically a literary work by a native Hong Kong writer, namely, Dung Kai-cheung’s Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (Atlas), through the lens of translation. By analysing how Dung Kai-cheung engages in three levels of translation to paint a kaleidoscopic image of Hong Kong, this article shows how the concept of Sinophone can inspire, enlighten and even question existing knowledge about Hong Kong’s history and culture. Eventually, Atlas, shown as deprived of a nativist or nationalistic discourse, creates new epistemic possibilities for understanding Hong Kong. As part of the ongoing global Sinophone cultures, Atlas also exemplifies how Hong Kong can be imagined to hold an equally important position vis-a-vis Mainland China.

Contemporary Re-emergence of the Qipao: Political Nationalism, Cultural Production and Popular Consumption of a Traditional Chinese Dress

2007 ◽  
Vol 189 ◽  
pp. 144-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Chew
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Nationalism ◽  
The State ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Scale

The qipao ceased to be worn for everyday occasions afer the 1950s in the PRC and the late 1960s in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. But it has powerfully re-emerged in the last few years. This is puzzling considering the swiftness and broad scale of the re-emergence, and the qipao's recent history of being marginalized. Are the political and cultural elites responsible and what motivated them? Besides political and cultural nationalism, are there other reasons that have led a large number of people to resume wearing the qipao? This study finds that the state did not play a significant role in the qipao's re-emergence, that cultural producers and celebrities contributed much to it, and that the symbolic meanings of the modern historical qipao have been repackaged and now cater to a variety of consumers for very different reasons.

Fashioning Socialist Visual Culture

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Xia Yan

Xia Yan, the underground leader of the left-wing films in the 1930s and top official of the film industry in the PRC since 1954, embodied the cultural history of the CCP. A brief biography of this Communist feminist artist leader disrupts the reductive dichotomy of the Party vs. artists in film studies and illuminates a tension-ridden history of socialist filmmaking that constituted a highly contentious site in the socialist revolution. Situating his politically engagingartistic creativity inside ashiftingpolitical process, this chapter traces Xia Yan’s major role in transmitting the New Culture agenda of transforming a patriarchal culture in socialist cultural production and delineatesdiverse and contradictory politicalpositions and artistic preferences in artists’ innovative experimentsofcreating a socialist new culture. It also analyzes his films that continued the paradigm of revolutionary heroines.

Merdeka!: Merger, Separation and a Transnational Golden Age

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Edna Lim
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Transnational Cinema ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Transnational Space

This chapter begins the book’s study of the golden age as a pre- national cinema, and examines the period as a transnational cinema that mimics Singapore’s positioning as a transnational space. Borrowing Sheldon Lu’s argument on Chinese cinema, it shows that film production in Singapore arose as ‘an event of transnational capital from its beginning’. To that end, the chapter considers the development, practices and migrant constitution of the film industry vis-à-vis the socio-political circumstances of this burgeoning nation, including Singapore’s complex relationship with Malaysia, and places Singapore cinema within the larger transnational network of film production and distribution in the region, Hong Kong and China.

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