Copyright Warning Use of this thesis/dissertation/project is for the purpose of private study or scholarly research only. Users must comply with the Copyright Ordinance. Anyone who consults this thesis/dissertation/project is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no part of it may be reproduced without the author’s prior written consent. CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG 香港城市大學 Changing Representations of Contemporary Mainland Women in Hong Kong Cinema: 1979~2009 香港電影中當代大陸女性形象的變遷： 1979～2009 Submitted to School of Creative Media 創意媒體學院 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy 哲學碩士學位 by Yang Meiyuan 楊梅媛 March 2010 二零一零年三月 Abstract This thesis studies the representation of mainland women in the last thirty years of Hong Kong cinema. Since 1980s, a number of Hong Kong films started to feature mainlanders, as the 1997 issue forced Hong Kong people to rethink their relationship with mainland China. Among these films, mainland women function quite differently to mainland men and in particular act as the “Other” in Hong Kong. As few researches notice this marginal group, I argue that they actually play a significant role and reflect how Hong Kong defines itself and mainland China when facing the power of the latter. Along with the development of both mainland and Hong Kong societies and the change of their power balance, the representations of mainland women vary. This thesis takes the representation of mainland women as the object of study, examining how it changes cinematically under different historical circumstance. Through gender study, culture study and cinematic language analysis, this thesis will investigate the cultural and gender politics behind the image of mainland women, fill the gap in the academic study and break a new path in the interpretation Hong Kong cinema. i Acknowledgements My immense gratitude goes to my supervisor, Dr. Louisa Wei. With her inspiration and guidance, an academic idiot like me could grow into a qualified MPhil student. I have benefited greatly form her, and her support I shall never forget. I also owe the other two committee members Professor Sheldon Lu and Professor He Zhou much for their comments and suggestions of my thesis. I find myself indebted to Christine Askew, who proofread the thesis and corrected my terrible English; and Claudia Lau in School of Graduate Studies, who helped me to deal with those trivial affairs. Finally, I want to express my thanks to my Mum and Dad. Nothing is greater than their love to me in this world. Especially my Mum, without whose tireless care and selfless dedication, I would never be me. It was a long year. To my family, and in memory of my grandma. ii Table of Contents Abstract…………………….…………………………………………………………………i Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………...ii Table of Contents………….……………………….………………………………………...iii List of Illustrations…………..…………………………………………………...………….v Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 Stereotypical Roles of Mainland Women in Hong Kong Cinema……........7 1.1 A Brief Overview of Mainland Female Characters in Hong Kong Cinema before 1979…………….……..…………………………………………………..……7 1.2 Established Stereotypes for Mainland Women in Hong Kong Cinema………..9 1.2.1 As Old-fashioned Women with Traditional Virtues………………..…10 1.2.2 As a Marginal Group in Hong Kong’s Space………………………….13 1.2.3 As Speakers of Socialist Jargon and Bad Cantonese……………..…...18 1.3 The Floating Status of Mainland Women Hong Kong Cinema…………..…...21 1.3.1 Mainland Women’s Border Crossing………………………………….23 1.3.2 Mainland Women’s Ocean Crossing……………………………..……31 1.3.3 A City Myth Turned “National Allegory”……………………………...34 Chapter 2 Extreme Roles of Mainland Women in Hong Kong Cinema…….………..36 2.1 Undermining the Power of Mainland China…………………..……………....36 2.1.1 Victimizing Mainland Women for Sympathy and Recognition: A Hearty Response..………………………..……………………………36 2.1.2 Reconfiguring the Authority of Mainland China: Her Fatal Ways……40 2.1.3 Eroticizing Mainland Women to Make Hong Kong’s Masculinity: The Girls from China..…………..……………………..………………..51 2.2 In Fear of the Power of Mainland China……………………………………....56 2.2.1 Violent Mainland Women: Intruder……………….…………………..59 2.2.2 Seductive Mainland Women: Dumplings………….…………………..65 2.2.3 Gold-Digging Mainland Women: Hollywood Hong-Kong……...…….76 Chapter 3 Mainland Actresses in Hong Kong Film Industry………………..………..86 3.1 Actresses Who Played Mainland Women…….……………………………….86 iii 3.2 The Policy Needs: CEPA……….……………………………………………..87 3.3 Roles for Mainland Actresses..….…………….……………………………....92 3.4 Hong Kong “Flavor”?.….………………………..…………………………....94 Conclusion…..……………………………………………………………………………….98 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………100 Glossary of Chinese………………………………………………………………………..101 Work Cited ……………………………………….……………………………………......107 Filmography……………………………………………………………………………......114 iv List of Illustration Illustration Page 1. The Greatest Civil War on Earth………………………………………………….….. 8 2. Her Fatal Ways…………………………………………………………………………….. 11 3. A Hearty Response…………………………………………………………………………. 14 4. Hong Kong, Hong Kong………………………………………………………………….. 14 5. Mary from Beijing……………………………………………………………………….… 16 6. One Nigh in Mongkok……………………………………………………………………. 16 7. Perfect Life…………………………………………………………………………………... 29 8. Police Story III………………………………………………………………………………. 43 9. Her Fatal Ways…………………………………………………………………………….. 46 10. The Legend of an Erotic Movie Star………………………………………………… 52 11. Intruder……………………………………………………………………………………….. 60 12. Intruder……………………………………………………………………………………… 62 13. Intruder………………………………………………………………………………………. 64 14. The Lion Roars……………………………………………………………………………... 66 15. Dumplings……………………………………………………………………………………. 69 16. Hollywood Hong­Kong……………………………………………………………….….. 82 v Introduction In late the 1970s and early 1980s, the emerging 1997 issue caused a serious identity crisis in Hong Kong. The previous British colony, was, as Abbas observes, “now faced with the uncomfortable possibility of an alien identity about to be imposed on it from China” and experienced “a kind of last-minute collective search for a more definite identity” (1997, p.4). In searching for resolutions to the identity problems like the uncertainty of nationality and ethnicity, Hong Kong cinema started to redefine Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China and reconfigure “mainlander” characters. Not surprisingly, while constituting the dialectic of seeing and being seen, Hong Kong cinema treats its own people as the subjective Self, who watch the mainlanders as the estranged Other. Meanwhile, however, mainlanders have long been gazing at Hong Kong: envying its financial prosperity and metropolitan life, admiring its free access to western cultures and territories, and longing to make it part of their own territory. The mutual gaze results in what scholars often call the “China Syndrome” (Lu, 2005, p.298), which has colored perceptions of kinship and affinity with undertones of political anxiety and fear (Teo, 1997, p.207). Among films depicting mainlanders, a remarkable repertoire has interesting portrayals of mainland women in leading or supporting roles. Although this repertoire does not constitute the mainstream of Hong Kong cinema, it is notable and has been carried through the past three decades, during which the image of mainland women have gone through a series of changes under different historical circumstance. Interestingly, while feminist film criticism claims that in the cinema, the image of man underwent rapid differentiation while the primitive stereotyping of women remained with limited modifications (Johnston, 1999, p. 31), the situation in this small stream of Hong Kong cinema is just the opposite: while mainland male characters have been constrained in a few stereotypes, the image of mainland female characters have become much more complicated. Why is this the case? What kind of 1 roles can mainland women play in Hong Kong cinema to effectively reflect its search for identity? These are the main research questions of this thesis. Most studies on the representation of mainland characters are “gender-blind,” overlooking the gender dimension of cultural politics while writing political and cultural history (Yuval-Davis, 1997, pp. 2-3). As “the category of gender itself was never distinct from national, class/caste, and racial categories” (Sinha, 1995, p. 11), gender is an important factor in constructing the socio-cultural identity of Hong Kong. In a small number of existing studies, however, scholars have noticed the strong presence of mainland women in some films. Cheng Yu (1997) identifies three types mainland characters appearing in 1980s’ Hong Kong films: Ah Caan1 (Country Joe), violent criminals (“Big Circle”), and illegal female immigrants (pp.98-100). He notices that only the third type was portrayed in a more humanistic way. Limited to film made in the 1980s, however, Cheng’s classification seems quite general. Esther Yau (1994) also notes that when describing male and female mainlanders, Hong Kong cinema adopts different attitudes. She studies the narrative point of view in Long Arm of the Law (Sheng gang qibing, 1984) and Homecoming as “differentiated by a masculine versus a feminine perspective,” indicating Hong Kong’s mixed feelings towards mainland China—fear and empathy are interwoven (1994, p. 198). Both Li Cheuk-to (1994) and Leung Noong-kong (1997) analyzed Homecoming (Sishui liunian, 1984) and point out the different character settings for Hong Kong and mainland women