University De Macau

UNIVERSITY DE MACAU UNIVERSITY OF MACAU FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION Stephen Chow — the King of Comedy in Hong Kong “Laughter in Disguise” and “Seeing beyond Believing” By Shen Chen (Ives) M-A9-5506-0 Supervisor: Prof. Tan See Kam A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Macau August 2011 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis represents my own work, including where due acknowledgments are made, and that it has not been previously included in a thesis, dissertation or monograph submitted to this university or to any other institutions for a degree, diploma or other qualifications. Signature _ ii Acknowledgments The conceptualization of this thesis, the refinement of its content, and its eventual production have benefited from the contribution of numerous people. I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to extend my sincerest appreciation to each and every one of them. Biggest and broadest thanks must go first to my supervisor Prof. Tan See Kam whose motto “flexibility in thoughts and creativity in deeds” have and will be inspiring and influencing me for good. He enthused me with the study of movies, deflated, deflected and sharpened my ideas, and assisted me in a number of inquiries at the heart of the research explored in this thesis with his healthy skepticism, his illuminating criticism, his shrewd advice, his extreme attention to detail and his commitment to seeing the thesis through. I am also deeply in debt to Prof. Chen Huailin, whose rigid, but rigorous inculcation of knowledge imparted nerves of steel and immunity to trials and tribulations to me; Prof. Timothy Alan Simpson, who is open to argument on assignments and papers; Prof. Wu Mei, who is easy-going in life and meticulous in academics; Prof. Liu Shih-diing, whose critical communication invested me with critical thinking to distinguish “the wolf in sheep’s clothing”, and Prof. Ting Yi-feng, from whom I know how to “keep my cool” and “play it cool” in the presentation in that she is the coolest teacher I have ever seen. Nor can I forget Jenny, our secretary, for her concrete identifiable contributions. Finally, I would like to convey my deepest gratitude to all those who, in one way or another, helped me complete the thesis. iii Abstract This thesis is an interpretative attempt to explore the form and content of Stephen Chow’s Hong Kong movies, which are famous for his non-sensical levity. Known in Cantonese as mou-lei-tou and wu-li-tou in Mandarin, this levity expands the realms of comedy genre. Stephen Chow’s comedies dissect the fraught relations between Hong Kong and Mainland China, showing how Hong Kong struggles and negotiates with Mainland China in the matter of national affiliation, political allegiance and cultural citizenship. The handover of Hong Kong in 1997 from Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China will be viewed as a watershed, according to which, a wide spectrum of Stephen Chow’s movies are covered and analyzed in this thesis. This thesis engages with semiotics to decipher the stills extracted from Stephen Chow’s movies within the frame of postmodernism. It argues that the attitudes and perceptions of Hong Kong toward Mainland China, as seen in and through Stephen Chow’s movie corpus, have been transformed from being negative and pessimistic to something comparatively more positive and optimistic, transfigured from the deep-seated concepts or stereotypes to being more open and liberal, and transmuted from the horror for and macabreness toward Mainland China to gradual mergence and assimilation with and into each other. In terms of Stephen Chow’s movies, the correspondence between Hong Kong and Mainland China has come a long way and has been making their way toward peace, harmony and inclusion. Key words: Movie/film/cinema, Hong Kong movies, Comedy, Postmodernism, Semiotics iv Table of Contents Declaration…………………………………………………………………………...……..ii Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………….………iii Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..……iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………...….……v Introduction…………………………………………….....…………………………..……1 Literature Review…………………………………………………………………..……..2 Movie/Film/Cinema?.......................................................................................................3 Hong Kong Movies…………………………………………………………....………..6 Comedy………………………………………………………………………...……..….9 Postmodernism……………………………………………………………….………..36 Semiotics……………………………………………………………...………..……….43 Method…………………….……………………………………………..…………………48 Research Question………………………………………………..…………….……….51 Data Analysis…………………………………………………...………………..……….51 Discussion and Conclusion…………………………………………...………………85 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..………..87 v Introduction Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian movie director, once said: “As a movie director, what I grab hold of and master at my command, since the birth of arts, is the most glamorous art form, the only and the most ‘realistic’ lingua franca in the world.” (陆绍阳, 2009, p. 12) [This is my translation on 意大利导演帕索里尼说过，作为一名电影导演，他所掌握的是自艺术诞生以来最有魅力的艺术形式，是全世界唯一共同的，最“真实”的语言。] “The creation of a film is, in part, a structure of educated guesswork and creative repetition” (Kolker, 1998, p. 14). Movies are made and targeted to the audience and will survive only as far as its viewers find it acceptable — no matter it is a feature, diverting or entertaining, or documentary, characterized as the portrayal of reality. Movies, as the seventh art, satisfy our basic instinct to delineate reality, portray the world around us, and voice our opinions in a covert or overt way. The objectives of the study The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 is a stain in China’s strike toward democracy. The handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 is a fatal watershed in the relationship between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Against this background, this thesis dissects Stephen Chow’s non-sense movies, which are the epitome of postmodernism. The dissection “requires researchers to politicize the social problems by situating them in historical and cultural contexts, to implicate themselves in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and to relativize their findings” (Charmaz, 1995 as cited in Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 52). Stephen Chow’s movies, falling into the category of comedy, which “[hinge] upon the rules of social and cultural behavior in force at a given time and place” (Weitz, 2009, p. 15) and “[welcome] the extravagant, the exaggerated, the larger-than-life” (Lowe, 2008, p. 2), are often involved in the politics of representation: “Who and what we laugh at, and why, has 1 implications in terms of both how we see others and how we define ourselves” (King, 2002, p. 129). “One of the key preconditions of the postmodern condition is the proliferation of signs” (Collins, 2000, pp. 759), in which, presence stands for absence. Postmodernism, as John Hill (1998) explains, does not simply interpret old materials and representations as a kind of depthlessness, but also employs them as critical ingredients to deconstruct and subvert themselves as well as construct and develop new ones through reorienting artistic and cultural discourses (p. 102). Using postmodern esthetics, Hong Kong’s attitudes and perceptions toward Mainland China, as portrayed in Stephen Chow’s movies, are transformed into icons, indices and symbols, which, in turn, are re-worked, re-constructed, re-positioned and re- developed to re-voice their opinions toward Mainland China. The Significance of the study Semioticians would regard films as texts, which “can be approached, experienced, in reaction to the sign[s]” (Barthes, 1977, pp. 158). Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis (1992) support this stance when they see the film-text as a social construct rather than as a mere emulation of reality (p. 191). In this thesis, the semiotic approach is employed in the analysis of the film text. Contrary to the traditional accentuation on the character and plot of movies, semiotics focuses on the filmic signifiers, putting them under the analytical microscope that, to some extent, “renders film analysis less naïve, less caught-up in the make-believe world of the story of the film” (Stam, 2000, p. 147). The movies can then be scrutinized shot by shot, image by image, so as to explore and discover the meanings behind each shot and image. This scrutiny and discovery of meaning is “an active process” (Fiske, 2011, pp. 43-44) and “can never be analyzed in an isolated fashion” (Barthes, 1994, p. 158). Literature Review 2 Movie/Film/Cinema What is Movie/Film/Cinema? “If poetry is what you cannot translate . then ‘art’ is what you can’t define” (Monaco, 2009, p. 24). So too is the movie, which, received as the seventh art, was born in December 28, 1895. What is the first thing that pops up in your mind when we talk about movies? Obviously and naturally, the idea of movies as a form of “entertainment” is in the forefront of people’s mind. For many, “A film is what we see when we go to the cinema (or the movies) or watch a videocassette or a television broadcast of a film” (Kolker, 1998, p. 11). However, we could enjoy a film on line, on our portable video devices, cellphones or any other gadgets in this cyber era, which is no longer confined to the theater or certain devices and equipment. That answer to the question seems quite simple, concise and straightforward, but it only scratches the surface. In fact, the “deep” answer would go into “the heart of the complexities of the institutions, the practices, and the viewing of movies” (ibid.). Berys Gaut thinks that “film is an art, not simply the recording of an art: communication occurs via the mode of presentation of content, not simply via the presentation of different contents” (2010, p. 43). In other words, it is how films present the content that sets communication into motion, not simply what they present, during the process of which, “a person’s beliefs, understandings, and values are all activated within the context of film viewing” (Kolker, 1998, p.

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