Ip Man is a Hong Kong semi-biographical martial arts film which base on the life of Yip Man, a grandmaster of the martial art WingChun and master of Bruce Lee. The film focused on events happened on Yip’s life that took place in Foshan during the Sino-Japanese War. The film was directed by Wilson Yip and stars Donnie Yen as Ip Man, and the martial arts choreography was done by Sammo Hung.
Why this film attracts me to study on, it was because of the collective memories it brings out and the identity issue related to this. As mentioned above, the setting of this movie is in the Sino-Japanese war period, this period always appear in Hong Kong and Chinese film. Whenever this kind of film comes out, the opinion related to them always will have some relation on Japan. Many started to mention how hard the life is back to the war period or how bad the Japanese army behaved, but the key issue here is: not all of them really have experience on that period, we sometimes remember what we did not ourselves experience firsthand, the so called memory was confirmed by the memories of others This is also a characteristic of Collective Memories.
This film also reminds me of the identity of Hong Kong people. Yip man was the master of Bruce Lee, and Bruce Lee makes himself famous as a Hong Kong martial art master, it seems that he become the pride of Hong Kong and Hong Kong people, with this regard, Hong Kong people tend to have special feeling toward Yip Man, they consider him as a pride of Hong Kong too. Under this emotional feeling toward the character, Hong Kong audiences are more likely to put themselves into the character. With this circumstance, the movie reshapes and manipulates the identity of Hong Kong audience and their emotional feeling on the relationship between China and Japan with in this two hours film. First, the film emphasis the fight between China and Japan, when the audience put themselves into Yip Man, wanted him to beat Japanese, they may also felt like they are Chinese, they should stand on the side of their own country. This process somehow reinforces the identification as a Chinese. As mentioned above, the collective memory on Sino-Japanese was created by others, by having those memories, it did affect the identity forming process. By this experience, we can see that the profound interaction between memory and identity formation does not necessarily depend on the truth of what is remembered.
But the all the collective memories and identity forming process are limited because of the nature of a film, even audience may have emotional feeling toward China with in that two hour or with in that period, that feeling will fade, because the rational side of the audience will know that the content about the fight between China and Japan which the film presented was being manipulates.
Ayaka Lai Ching Ching ( 10490293 )
The review has made some critical reflections on the cultural representations in the selected film, with reference to some theoretical concepts (e.g., characteristics of collective and social memories) learnt in class. The discussion on re-creating emotions and empathy achieved by the strategic use of “collective experience” is quite convincing.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you need to provide arguments for supporting the kind of “manipulation” addressed in the review. Do you mean the film consists of exaggerated depictions on the historical events? Can you quote some important scenes or key narratives from the film? What are their implications and possible impact on audience?