published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study attempts to understand, within a global and comparative context and with an emphasis on issues related to class, a number of representative aesthetic approaches and narrative forms to be found in a particular regional cinema – that of Hong Kong – as so many characteristic forms of artistic or cultural responses to the social phenomena that inevitably arise in accompaniment to a society’s process of modernization or development. The assumption is that the modernization of a society – when it is open to global trends and currents and follows a Western-led, capitalist direction – brings with it a host of shared, inevitable social transformations that filmmakers, with the formal and stylistic resources that are current and available to them at a given time and place, respond to with the aim of intervention, reflecting changes that are taking place in society even as they play a role in effecting those very changes. The foreground of the study is the postwar development of Hong Kong cinema as a site of multiplicity from the Fifties to the present, but it is seen against the background of the myriad practices – classical Hollywood, European art cinema, various national or Third World cinemas – that make up the system of world cinema as a whole. A number of issues central to the modernization of a society are considered in five thematic chapters – on poverty, social advancement, the lives of women, intellectuals, and youth culture – that explore how filmmakers from different periods and locations have addressed such issues in their work. The method is at once structuralist and historicizing – by situating individual texts within a comparative context that synoptically scans the variety of significant options available in the treatment of a particular subject matter, the formal possibilities and limitations – as well as the social and political implications – of a particular conception of the cinema become much more apparent. This desire to “spatialize” (to borrow Jameson’s notion) film history by suggesting a social community of texts or a synchronic set of options is complemented by a temporal or diachronic concern for changes in the zeitgeist, for generational differences and paradigm shifts, that allow for some sense of the relationship of an individual film to the history of cinema to emerge. This study can be considered, then, as an experiment at envisioning one possible way of practicing film history at a macro level and in a comparative and cross-cultural manner, whereby the paradigmatic shifts or epistemic revolutions of world cinema are viewed from a semi-peripheral and unexpected perspective (a location such as Hong Kong), in a way that relates what appear to be representational dilemmas of a purely local nature to more universal concerns, while embedding an account of a particular territorial cinema’s evolution within the larger narrative of regional and global cultural developments. / published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed September 24, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 455-485).

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

In this paper, I attempt to use the concept of “transregional imagination” by Zhang Yingjin to depict the Hong Kong film industry in the early 60s and examine how it has transformed the industry practices in Hong Kong cinema and shaped the Hong Kong identity. For decades, Hong Kong cinema has been of regional and transregional importance. The influx of film artists from the north, especially Shanghai, during the post-war period brought a cosmopolitan outlook to the industry. This was coupled with the investment of overseas Chinese from Singapore which helped to expand the distribution network of Hong Kong films within a short time. By tracing the historical development of the industry, I wish to revisit the major events in the region which have contributed to the uniqueness of Hong Kong culture. I would also like to illustrate the characteristics of the transregionalism through the study of a trilogy of nanbei (literally, south and north) comedies released in the early 60s by the MP&GI company. They are The Greatest Civil War on Earth (Nanbei He, 1961); The Greatest Wedding on Earth (Nanbei Yi Jia Qin, 1962) and The Greatest Love Affair on Earth (Nanbei Xi Xian Feng, 1964) which depict the conflicts between the Mandarin-speaking “Northerners” (mainly from Shanghai and neighbouring cities) and Cantonese-speaking “Southerners”. The transregional imagination is manifested in these films which have the benefit of funding from overseas Chinese, casting from Shanghai and local artists, screenwriters from USA, production team mainly from the north, distribution network across regions and audience from international markets. I would further examine the comedy genre as a common language among diversified cultures and a discussion of modernity through an analysis of the company’s business strategies and the scenes which depict western values and urban images of Hong Kong during the 60s. I hope the analysis will be able to rediscover the transregional advantages that Hong Kong film industry has enjoyed and which, I believe, have also paved the way for its positioning in the era of globalization. / published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Filmography: Leaves 322-327. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-352).