The New Hong Kong Cinema and the "Déjà Disparu" Author(s): Ackbar Abbas Source: Discourse, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Spring 1994), pp. 65-77 Published by: Wayne State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389334 Accessed: 22-12-2015 11:50 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wayne State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Discourse. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The New Hong Kong Cinema and the Déjà Disparu Ackbar Abbas I For about a decade now, it has become increasinglyapparent that a new Hong Kong cinema has been emerging.It is both a popular cinema and a cinema of auteurs,with directors like Ann Hui, Tsui Hark, Allen Fong, John Woo, Stanley Kwan, and Wong Rar-wei gaining not only local acclaim but a certain measure of interna- tional recognitionas well in the formof awards at international filmfestivals. The emergence of this new cinema can be roughly dated; twodates are significant,though in verydifferent ways. The firstoccurs around 1979, which is when a new genera- tion of Hong Kong-bornfilmmakers, educated in film schools abroad and withno direct ties witheither China or Taiwan, turn to filmmakingafter a period of apprenticeshipin local television. The resultis a cinema thatin termsof technical competence and thematicrichness represents a qualitativeleap forwardfrom what wentbefore. Three filmsreleased in 1982 exemplifythis moment: Tsui Hark's Zu: Warriorsfrom the Magic Mountain, a kung fu film distinguishedby its brilliantmastery of special effects;Ann Hui's Boat People, about Vietnamese refugees,a courageous use of cin- ema to deal with pressing social and political issues; and Allen Fong's Fatherand Son, withits quasi-autobiographicalstory about growingup in working-classHong Kong, where everydaylife is presentedby means of a sophisticatedfilm language. The second date is, I believe, even more consequential for Hong Kong cinema - 1984, the year of Thatcher's visitto China which culminatedin theJoint Declaration returningHong Kong This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 66 Discourse16.3 to China in 1997. The JointDeclaration caused a certainamount of anxiety,even though one of its termsis that the sociopolitical structureof Hong Kong will remain unchanged for fiftyyears (according to the slogan "one country,two systems").But it also had one other effect.It made Hong Kong people look at their countrywith new eyes. It is as if the possibilityof the disappear- ance of this social and cultural space led to seeing it in all its complexityand contradictionfor the firsttime: an instance, as Benjamin would have said, of love at last sight. The new Hong Kong cinema ultimatelyis interesting,then, not because it has caught up in termsof technical competence and sophistication withthe restof the worldbut because of the wayfilm is being used to explore and negotiate a problematicand paradoxical cultural space withoutabandoning its role as popular entertainment.The new Hong Kong cinema claimsour attentionbecause it has finally found a subject- it has found itselfas a subject. The currentfascination with Hong Kong by the people of Hong Kong themselvesis in some strange way a new phenom- enon. There has, of course, alwaysbeen widespread interestin Hong Kong on the part of locals and foreignersalike, especially since 1949 when the cityembarked in earnest on its spectacular international career. The American conservative economist Milton Friedman, we remember,raved about Hong Kong as a capitalistutopia. But until recentlythis interestwas focused pri- marilyon economics and politics,and to a lesserextent on history (attributableperhaps to colonialist embarrassment).From these perspectives,many studies of Hong Kong are available. However, when it comes to the much more elusive question of Hong Kong culture,all to be foundwas largelymystification and disavowal.To avoid the issue of Hong Kong culture,locals and expatriatesalike used to take refugebehind the image of Hong Kong as a "cultural desert,"as ifculture meant onlyShakespeare, Beethoven, and the like or even Peking Opera for that matter (the scarcityof all of whichwas loudlybemoaned) . On the question of culture,it was as ifthe people of Hong Kong lived througha versionof whatFreud calls the "familyromance": the fantasyof some childrenthat their real parentsare not theiractual parents.The resultis thatstories about Hong Kong always turned into stories about somewhere else, as if Hong Kong culturewere somehow not a subject.This is a case of whatFreud calls "reversehallucination": if hallucination is seeing whatis not there,then reversehallucination is not seeing what is there. This reversehallucination - not seeing what is there - sug- geststhat if Hong Kong cinema mayhave found itselfas a subject, Hong Kong as a subject is one that threatensto get easily lost This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Spring1994 61 again. This time the threatwill not be that there is no interestin Hong Kong - Hong Kong is today a prettyhot topic. The threat will be that Hong Kong as a subject will be presented and repre- sented in terms of the old binarisms whose function it is to restabilizedifferences and domesticatechange (among the most pernicious are binarismslike East and West or traditionand mo- dernity).Precisely because Hong Kong is such an elusive subject, thereis a temptationto use, and to believein, the establishedforms of (mis) representation.This is dis-appearance, then, in a veryspe- cificsense in thatit givesus a realitythat is not so much hidden as purloined. In the same way,the binarismsused to representHong Kong as subject give us not so much a sense of déjà vu as an uncannyfeeling of whatwe mightcall the déjà disparu: the feeling thatwhat is new and unique about the situationis alwaysalready gone, and we are leftholding a handfulof clichés. It is onlyfrom this point of view thatwe can query a remarkoften made about Hong Kong cinema: that it is the least contemplativecinema in the world.If it is not a contemplativecinema, it is because thereis no timefor contemplation. Things move too fast. The problem that the new Hong Kong cinema faces, therefore,is how to keep pace witha subject thatis alwayson the verge of disappearing. Both the opportunitiesand the dangers that face the new Hong Kong cinema can be related to the nature of Hong Kong itselfas cultural space, about which I want to brieflymake four points, the firstof which involvesthe question of historyand its spatialization.As a city,Hong Kong has been very much the playthingand ambiguous beneficiaryof history.Colonized by the Britishin the nineteenthcentury; occupied by theJapanese in the Second World War; swelled by the influxof refugeesfrom com- munistChina after1949, which gave it so many of its cooks and tailorsand entrepreneurs;taken in hand by the multinationalsas it developed into an internationalcity; and now to be returnedto China: Hong Kong's historyis one of shock and radical changes. As if to protect themselvesagainst this series of traumas,Hong Kong people have littlememory and no sentimentfor the past. The general attitudeto everything,sometimes indistinguishable fromthe spiritof enterprise,is: cancel out and pass on. (In this regard,it is worthnoting that there is as yet no historyof Hong Kong writtenfrom a post-1984perspective.) But historyexists, if not in survivingmonuments or writtenrecords, then in the jos- tling anachronisms and spatial juxtapositions that are seen on everystreet; that is, historyis inscribedin spatial relations.When the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank building designed by Norman Fosterwas being built,for example, this ultra-high-techmultina- tional building was surrounded by traditionalChinese bamboo This content downloaded from 142.157.160.248 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 11:50:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 68 Discourse16.3 scaffolding:an image of historyas palimpsest.One of the features of new Hong Kong cinema (exemplified most outstandinglyin StanleyKwan's 1988 Rougeand 1991 CentreStage) is itssensitivity to spatial issues and itsadoption of a spatial narrativeboth to under- line and to come to termswith these historicalanachronisms: space as a means of reading a historyin the process of itsmaking. We get a bettersense of the historyof Hong Kong throughits new cinema, withits representationsof architectureand everydaylife than is currentlyavailable in any textbook. Related to the question of space is that of affectivity.In a problematicspace, affectivityin turnbecomes problematic.It is as if all the waysof relatinghave somehow shifted,the bonds which join us to others as friendsand lovers, as daughters and sons blurringlike the lines on a televisionscreen that is not tracking properly.It is not just a question of "traditional"emotional re- sponses versusmodern indifference:the