Lan Kwai Fong 2 (2012) 喜愛夜蒲

Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s famous night club and bar concentrated. Men and women are both like to go there to get some fresh air and to make fun of. Lan Kwai Fong 2 is a Hong Kong local movie, modeled on Hong Kong people are proud of clubbing life. It tells the story that the new concept of a public urban young people for love and relations between the sexes. 

Stereotype – Referring to the world

In Lan Kwan Fong 2, the plot follows four different characters whose lives and love lives revolve around the nightlife of Lan Kwai fong. Poor photography assistant Rain (Kelvin Kwan) meets rich girl Summer (Shiga Lin) at a nightclub and they fall in love quickly. However, they find their ensuring relationship troubled by class differences. According to Lippmann’s ideas regarding stereotype, it is referring to the world (reality). Rain’s friend Don (Sammy Sum) is a frequent player who starts a phone flirtation with a mysterious woman Siri (Liu Yuqi) and become enamored. When he wants to make sure on the couple’s relationship with each other, he has rejected and faces the harsh truth and he hurt. Avis (Avis Chan) hangs out at the club attending to his crappy boss, but along the way he falls for pitiable and pneumatically-pleasing club girl QQ (Mia). A young police officer (Dominic Ho) is shyly pursuing aggressive Japanese disc jockey Maxim (Linah Matsuoka).

In above four relations, the first relationship is to establish and maintain, or even a family, to raise the next generation of education, to talk about the future. The last two relations is heart to heart and consonance communication with each other. The movie gets rid of the sigh of “9am-5pm” (朝9晚5) boring working life, find their own way out and very positive. Moreover, the relation between Rain and Summer, they don’t go club and work hard in mind.

Collective Memory

In the end of the movie, the well-designed “back in time” (時光倒流) is unique and full of human touch. And Rain make promises with Summer, “我今日做嘅呢件事,身邊咁多朋友幫手,我都係希望可以倒轉返翻去到果一日,可以收翻我講錯嘅說話,收返我做錯嘅野,希望你可以原諒我”. This part is really touching and memorable. Actually, “back in time” has two double meaning. The first meaning is to make up for the fault again from scratch, same with the apperception of characters in the movie. The second meaning is the image of facing forwards and people backwards. The identity of the people of Hong Kong lost and core values ​​gradually collapse after the reunification, the projection of feelings. The movie full of 80,90’s feelings and collective memory. According to Maurice Halbwachs’ (1980) work on Collective Memory, “remembering is always situated in the present”. Therefore, “Clubbing” is a way of life, but also includes an urban growth experiences and feelings.

Chan Ki Yan Yuko (21047682/10420191)

Online review - 'Vulgaria' : Presenting the core values and stereotypes of Hong Kong

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‘Vulgaria’ (低俗喜劇) is a 2012 Hong Kong comedy film directed by Pang Ho-cheung, starring by Chapman To, Ronald Cheng and Dada Chan. The movie is about a film producer invited by a university lecturer to share his experiences about the moviedom, through his achievements to tell the students how miserable in the industry. It won the “Best Supporting Actor and Actress” during the 32th Hong Kong Film Award. The following will focus on how ‘Vulgaria’ show the stereoytpes and the core values of Hong Kong.

There are some memorable screen to show the stereoytpes and core values of Hong Kong. First, the film producer - To (starring by Chapman To) want to make more money to pay back to his ex-wife to have a chance to see his daughter. This screen can show the spirit of Hong Kong people work hard for what they want and to have a better life. Since To did not have enough money to pay back to his ex-wife, his ex-wife don't let him to take his daughter back home and ask him to give up the custody of their daughter, but his daughter is the only moral pillars for him, he don't want to show his failure to his ex-wife and his daughter, so he tries to find somebody to invest to his film, earn money to fight back his daughter and tell his ex-wife that no matter what method, he won't give up the chance to take care of his daughter and pay her back all the money. By the invitation of his friend, he have a chance to meet up with an investor in China - Tyrannosaurus (starring by Ronald Cheng), a ganger in Guangxi and dinner with him. During the dinner, To and his friend force to eat different kinds of food, which is the organ of animals.

According to this dinner, we can also find some cultural difference between Hong Kong and China. First, after Hong Kong return to China, many people go back to China to run their business because they think that there will have more opportunities for them to having their own business. And due to the development and open policy in China, many traditional local film products were disappear. Nowadays the investors only want to make more profits form the audiences, so that the director will shoot the screen that suit for Chinese audiences, since China is the biggest market for them to earn more money. However, 'Vulgaria' is the different case. Before shooting, Pang Ho-cheung already told the investor that it is impossible to broadcast in China, even can't pass the China's censorship in such a limit of time. Therefore, this film contain a lot of Cantonese, foul language and sexual screen, which is not suitable to broadcast in China and hard to translate for mainlanders to understand the contents.

Second, more and more mainlanders travel in Hong Kong, they made a lot of problems and cause a chain of anti-mainlander campaign, such as take photo in front of D&G store re-write a song to satirize the mainlanders behavior etc. They think that mainlanders are unruly, unfashionable, littering, spitting, 'pee and poo' everywhere, talking loudly in public place and take all the benefits that should only provide to Hong Kong people. Therefore, most Hong Kong people try to protect their own culture and called them 'Locust', which means the mainlanders are greedy and never satisfied. We can also find this kind of stereotype in 'Vulgaria', Tyrannosaur (Ronald Cheng) dressed in some unfashionable suit, talking loudly and unruly. He tries to force To and his friend to have sex with a mule and eat different kinds of animals' organs, which is the director want to present the uncivilized image of mainlanders to the audiences.

To sum up, Pang Ho-cheung used the way of vulgar in 'Vulgaria' to present the uncivilized image of mainlanders which mostly Hong Kong people think about. He also used a 'black humor' to present the strive spirit of Hong Kong people and the situation of the film industry in reality Hong Kong nowadays. As the result, I think this film is produce for Hong Kong people and represent the local Hong Kong culture.

By Hui Chun Sing (10523154/21055323)

Identity Negotiation of Hong Kong Women in Sergeant Tabloid

Lui Fei-hap was a rational, independent cosmopolitan police woman in her 30s. She was born in a middle-class family which her father was a tailor and her mother was a police woman. She was full of passion of her work but she used to lie about her occupation because she thought it connoted with crude manner women that scared away men. Although Fei-hap being very tough during her worked period, she preserved her tender side in leisure. She learned Chinese style drawing and often donated them to temple for charity. She loved her parent and made a lot of friends. Like her name, Lui fei-hap, meaning heroine in Cantonese, she tried to help friends and colleagues whenever they were in need.

Despite her good personality, she was being stereotyped as ‘Hong Kong Girl’ by A1, a journalist from ‘Boom Daily’ who saw her arrested her ex-boyfriend, solely based on her love life and later the news was known by her family, colleagues and friends. Fei-hap was even one of the ‘Ten crazy Hong Kong women file’ A1 wanted to published. It reflected that the media had a great influence in defining the cultural identity, especially the stereotyped ‘Hong Kong Girl’ term. No matter how good one woman was, it seems to be a ‘sin’ for not getting married in her 20s/30s. A point to note was that once Fei-hap found her ‘true love’-A1, the file had been deleted; meaning that she no longer was a ‘Hong Kong Girl’.

Actually A1 was not the only one in the drama that having a relationship with Fei-hap. Wong Tze-tsuen, Fei-hap’s colleague, also became Fei-hap’s boyfriend for a while. Wong-Tze, which was his nickname and referred to ‘prince’ in Cantonese, symbolized a handsome, rich, perfect man in the drama. Even though Fei-hap got a ‘prince’, she was the one to decide to break up with him once she knew they do not match. She was willing to give up a ‘secure’ social status in order to search for her true happiness, or true love.

The cosmopolitan working women’s identity had formed a ‘route’: from the traditional working women who work to share family burden to cosmopolitan working women who look for individual happiness. The character, Madam Kiu, could be illustrated for such changes. Madam Kiu used to be a serious, boyish police woman. She did whatever her father liked her to do, such as doing exercises and watching football matches. However, after she made friends with Fei-hap and her friends, she started to learn how to make up and dress up, became more feminine. She even got a boyfriend and braved enough to find her own happiness under Fei-hap’s, Fei-hap’s friends and her boyfriend’s encouragement. The traditional identity was fading out and changed into the cosmopolitan ones.

All in all, Lui Fei-hap in Sergeant Tabloid had tried to reflecting most Hong Kong women in society who are in middle class that negotiating their identity between narrative of themselves and narrative of society/media. The society still presented a traditional value on women have to be married in the 20s or 30s. They might be stereotyped as ‘old spinster’, but they were using their agency to redefine their happiness, like what Fei-hap and Madam Kiu did.

by So Yee Lam, Mieko (2105 9202)

McDull•The Pork of Music: Affinity as a selling point

Introduction

Released in 2012, McDull·The Pork of Music is a well-known animated film in Hong Kong. The highlight of this film is the satirize jokes, eloquent word play and the cultural localness that elicits HKers’ empathic emotions. This review will analyze the text in consideration of cultural affiliation, stereotyped representations, and narration of identities in local films (topic 2,3,9).

Disadvantaged Groups in HK: grassroots lives

When analyzing the narration of identities in this text, it may be a cliché to talk about the familiar setting and background cartoons of HK’s street view and scenery. What’s more? The film actually represents different social classes with specific attributes, while how it mocks the everyday situation creates much fun to enjoy, but this film does not manipulate the feeling of nostalgia or use memory to form identity as some may suggest.

The story sets in with the principal’s hardship to run the kindergarten, like many Hong Kong people who can no longer run their business in small and medium enterprises.

Halbwachs mentions that “What makes recent memories hang together is not that they are contiguous in time: it is rather that they are part of a totality of thoughts common to a group” (Halbwachs 1992). The Pork of Music uses a lot of down-to-earth situations to narrate HKers’ identity. Satirize jokes take place when the kindergarten has to cut the cost: adding water into the milk, thinner biscuit, or even using a chestnut as the snack for months…It is like an everyday situation happened in any organization which have to lower the cost.

With the local cultural insights, many of the flawed characters appeared in the text and most of them are from the lower class. They are the kindergartens’ alumni who attended the fund-raising event for Spring Field Kindergarten, including the paint-splashing debt collectors, butcher, annoying household products salesmen, prisoners, etc. Their content of speech lively tells how Hong Kong people live their daily lives, like the bargaining between butchers and shoppers and how the salesmen promote their products in a similar way. The stereotyped representation of the groups creates a short cut for audience to recognize them, and empathic emotions would be elicited while watching the ‘gag’s in the text.

Hopes and dreams of Hong Kongers

The major conflict appeared in the drama would be the bitter disappointments in life faced by HK people. Principal’s love of music does not bring him an easy life, but the endless struggling process to operate the kindergarten. After years of struggle and renaming the kindergarten from “Winter Duck”, “Summer chicks” … and finally “Spring Field”, the principal is admired by the alumni for his faith in devoting in education. Many of the characters in Mcdull’s movies are portrayed as underachieving, for they represent the majority of HK people, kind of living in hardship but not too hard, generally recognized as smart persons but not too smart. In fact, the HK spirit is generally perceived as being tough, and to overcome the hardship again and again.

The discrepancy between dreams and reality is cruel, and Hong Kong is particularly a place full of bitter disappointments in life. K.W. Ma argues that, the urge for a stable identity is a persistent and recurrent drive in social and cultural practices in the era of increasing fluidity of identities (Ma 1999). Being musicians in Hong Kong is a road “less traveled by”, and most would be doomed to failure. The first part of the film talks about the principal’s love of music and his lifelong coaching for kids. After experiencing the loads of failure, the most touching part of the story is revealed in the ending that his effort was recognized by a passed away musician. 

By the way, I personally think there’s a word pun within the name of the film, the Pork of Music, ‘pork’ may not only refer to Mcdull as a piglet, but also the courage to devote oneself to music (the Cantonese homophone word ‘pok’ means courage).

Works Cited

Ma, K.W. (1999). Identity, culture, and the media. In Culture, politics and television in Hong Kong. (pp. 1-18). London: Routledge.

Halbwachs, M. (1992). (Ed. & translated by Coser. L.A.) Chapter 1-4. On Collective Memory. (pp.41-53). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

By Hazel, Tong Cheuk Ying (10487073/ 21047619)