The Fighting Condition in Hong Kong Cinema : Local Icons and Cultural Antidotes for the Global Popular

Ching Kiu, Stephen CHAN

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference ProceedingsBook ChapterResearchpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In Hong Kong action cinema, the inevitable condition of fighting usually, though not always, ends up in one of the fighters winning the show, another losing it, such being a popular convention in matters of martial art. Culturally, the spectacle of any good fight is a matter for public appreciation, discourse, and indeed consumption, though the outcomes of any particular game could sometimes be whimsical, intangible or simply inconsequential. For politically Hong Kong is indeed rather intangible; the city has grown into perhaps one of the most sensitive ideological battlefields in the world, with its own unique cultural formation shaping a modern city life with a unique kind of colonial modernity. To grow from that groundwork of history, and indeed to build on the basis of the cosmopolitan framework involved, some local politicians would insist that we need prosperity and stability to keep intact the power bloc as
defined and delimited by the status quo of the late colonial rule up to 1997, the year of the big historical spectacle when the people saw themselves, as it were, eventually winning the game of (de-)colonization. Have the winners somehow now lost their grip on the object of their show? And how will they appreciate that ambivalent passage from colonial to postcolonial subjection, an inevitable passage of power as of sensibilities, supposedly allowing the Hong Kong people to start setting the rules of the game in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997?
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHong Kong connections : transnational imagination in action cinema
EditorsMeaghan MORRIS, Siu Leung LI, Stephen Ching-kiu CHAN
PublisherHong Kong University Press
Chapter4
Pages63-79
Number of pages17
ISBN (Print)9781932643190
Publication statusPublished - 2005
EventHong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema - Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Duration: 1 Jan 20031 Jan 2003

Conference

ConferenceHong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema
Country/TerritoryHong Kong
CityHong Kong
Period1/01/031/01/03
OtherCERG Project, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong SAR

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