Introduction:
Television is one of the
mass media, and the TV drama not only entertains the audiences but may also
bring some messages that the producers want to convey. The uses of both
graphics and audio make it more effective and efficient.
Inbound Troubles (老表，你好嘢！), is a television comedy-drama serial produced
by TVB in Hong Kong , and the
Cantonese name is very similar to the film Her Fatal Ways (表姐，妳好嘢！). Both the drama and the film take the contradiction and
harmony between Hongkongers and mainlanders as the topic, the growing cultural
differences between Hong Kong and China Hong Kong .
Stereptyping
and Image creating:
At the beginning of the
drama, the behaviour of tourists from mainland perform just as same as the
stereotyped impression by Hong Kong people, such as queuing outside the
luxury-products shop or even ignore the rule of queue, using cash for every payments,
wearing gold accessories, speak rudely and loudly, excrete randomly, etc.
All these reinforcing some commonly held beliefs, describe mainlanders as
uncivilized and money is the only thing that the mainlanders got.
Stereotyping functions through media, to simplify in order to make
representation in stereotypes and make events more digestible for audience by
only focusing on the individuals, and then extended to the representation of
groups of people (Rayner et al., 2001).The drama was censored in mainland
China, it already shows the freedom of speaking and rights of makes
opinions in Hong Kong. And about the mise-en-scene of the drama, a “secondary
production” of music called “蝗蟲天下” produced by Golden forum
was adopted. The lyrics describe mainlanders as locust, they makes Hong Kong people living standard poor because of
occupying the resources. The song brings social and cultural implication,
reinforcing the differences and conflicts between Hongkongers and mainlanders,
to help create “the others” for identifying self (Bennett et al., 2005). And
the drama plots also reflect some social issues. For example, the security of
shop D&G allowed mainlanders to take photos for the shop but not allowed
Hongkongers to do so, which is not fair. And the tour industry of Hong Kong is
being smeared, when the Hong Kong tour guide (湯盈盈) always thinks about cheating the
tourist for benefits and her attitude is bad. And beautified the
mainlanders through the play by Wong Cho-lam (王祖藍), as his character have good manner and pleasing
everyone. It seems aggravate the social problems among Hong Kong and mainland China
However, the images of
mainland people shifted from a negative portrayal into a relatively neutral
one. And the drama used some dramatic and comedic solutions to solve those
issues, using the slogan “和諧”(harmony) as the motifs to imply
that Hong Kongese should be tolerant, lightening the deviant behaviour of
mainlanders. Also, the usage of language blurs the differences, as the Hong
Kongese characters may speak poor mandarin while the mainlander
characters speak poor Cantonese.
Conclusion:
Sometimes, additional value
was imposed when audience may over-read the drama, imagine some new ideas
that the producers did not think about and did not expect when producing. The
views can be varied to different audience. Although the directors may want
to tell some idea, people may assume another idea to
the drama by themselves. They are not just receiving but also
recreating.
(576 words)
References:
Bennett, T.,
Grossberg, L., Morris, M., & Williams, R. (2005). New keywords: A
revised vocabulary of culture and society. Malden , MA
Rayner, P.,
Wall, P., & Kruger, S. (2001). Media studies: The essential
introduction. London
Chan Ho Chun Junald (10420693)
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