Special Topic: Remembering Hong Kong

 

1.      Why do we remember the past?

1.1. Remembering the past is always not a recovery of the “original” past.

1.2. Example: remembering might be a state project of building national identity. History is the field for cultural (national) identification (香港滄桑).

1.3. Remembering is inserting a fragment of the past into the present.

1.4. Nostalgia films are remembering the past of Hong Kong and inserting it into the current ideology.

1.5. What is the purpose and effect of Hong Kong’s nostalgia film? 

 

2.      The appropriation of history as a disappearing other

Example: 花樣年華

 

3.      The appropriation of history as a “laughable” other

3.1. From the early 90s to the mid 90s, there were a lot of nostalgia comedies in Hong Kong.

3.2. History is portrayed in film as the aura of the 50s and 60s.

3.3. These films focus on mannerisms, habits, customs, fashion, names or nicknames, the unique image of Cantonese stars (e.g. 呂奇) or characters (e.g. 黑玫瑰).

3.4. They are not concerned about the “styles” rather than the historical specificities.

3.5. The historical specificities are reduced to some stereotypical characters (華探長、毒販) and episodes (貪污).  

 

4.      Nostalgia film as a way of othering the past

4.1. An exotic or remote past is fabricated for making a contrast with the present.

4.2. The past becomes some old stories or legends confined to a specific period of time, not disturbing the present. 

4.3. The stylized past is creating historical ambivalence for identifying oneself with the present and preserving “prosperity and stability”. 

4.4. The historical ambivalence leads to flexibility in cultural identification

“The flexibility in cultural identification opens up a multi-accentual basis of cultural identification: that Hong Kong people may always have the freedom to identify themselves as Chinese, British ruled subjects, or Hong Kongers, in so far as status-quo is upheld.”