NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM DECODING THE TRADING FLOOR: CHARTING A POSTCOLONIAL HONG KONG IDENTITY THROUGH THE TV SCREEN WINNIE L. M. YEE Name Winnie L. M. Yee ABSTRACT Academic centre University of Hong Kong This article adds to the analysis of Hong Kong TV culture E-mail address
[email protected] by investigating recent trends in television production. It demonstrates that the small screen has become a means KEYWORDS of grappling with postcolonial Hong Kong identity, most Hong Kong; Financial Crime Thriller; Postcolonial Identity; noticeable in its reinvention of the genre of the financial Local; Transnational. crime thriller. This analysis must be considered against the background of two new developments in television: the growth of transnational collaborations intended to appeal to the Asian market, and the advent of TV series that replicate the experimentation of American shows and dispense with the traditional episodic narrative. 83 SERIES VOLUME V, Nº 2, WINTER 2019: 83-94 DOI https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2421-454X/9159 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TV SERIAL NARRATIVES ISSN 2421-454X SERIALS IN EAST ASIA NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM > WINNIE L. M. YEE DECODING THE TRADING FLOOR 1. INTRODUCTION After providing a brief background of Hong Kong tele- vision culture, this article will focus on two shows that deal TV dramas are not among the most widely researched with financial issues, The Greed of Man (1992) and The Trading products of Hong Kong popular culture. But we should not Floor (2018). The controversial 1992 TV drama The Greed of therefore assume there are fewer TV viewers than cinema Man (translated also as Great Times, Dashidai) created new audience members, or that Hong Kong TV does not appeal expectations in Hong Kong audiences and served as a proto- to a shared sense of Chineseness.