Identity in Hong Kong Cinema

1506 Words7 Pages
HKU SPACE Community College Second Semester, 2012-13 AD Programme CC280-03 Hong Kong and Chinese Societies in Transition Individual Essay Question 3 According to Stuart Hall, what is meant by ‘Identity’? With account of different phases of Hong Kong films from the 1970s to 1997, discuss how films reflected the social changes, and how these changes constructed Hong Kong identity(or local consciousness) after the 1967 Riots. Give examples of various representative films in each period for further discussion. Class: 280-03 Name: Tze Natalie ID: 10549476 Date: 16 Apr 2013 Number of Words: 1091 In ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, Stuart Hall (1990) regarded identity as a ‘production’. Instead of having fixed essence, identity is ever-changing in the context of the social environment. Hence, it contains impurity and contradiction which he described as “hybridity”. (Chu, 2003) He further suggested that it is the identity that determined what people in a community have become in the course of history. For a long time, Hong Kong has a complex identity due to its triangular relationship with the British colonizer and the Chinese motherland. (Chu) According to Hall, identity can be constituted within representation and cinema is ‘that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects’. (1990, pp. 236) This essay aimed to discuss the manifestation of social changes in different phases of Hong Kong films from 1970s
Open Document