Shu-mei Shih
This section on “The Gendered Body and Queer Configurations” is notable for its attention to Hong Kong cinema as a diverse and rich collection of films that are struggling to articulate a new identity in the context of the already-shifted political economy of culture between China and Hong Kong. Whereas Hong Kong cinema had boomed despite a climate of ultra commercialism and the impending retrocession to China before 1997, it is now increasingly aware of its impending doom where fewer and fewer films are made in Hong Kong, more and more films are co-productions, and art house or locally oriented films are considered to be too parochial. Instead of “doom and boom” (the impending doom of 1997 paradoxically saw the glorious booming of Hong Kong culture), as Ackbar Abbas once aptly described, it seems to be truly entering into an era of doom. Instead of the historical moment being pegged at 1997, prior to which Hong Kong cultural workers had taken a retrospective glance and attended to Hong Kong lovingly (Abbas coined the term “Love at Last Sight” in this case), today we must call upon the moral courage of critics and audiences alike to love a “fallen cinema” (Helen Leung’s term here) at the brink of disappearance. “Disappearance” is no longer an enabling paradox, as in Abbas, but a literal description. If we could not help but love Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, now love may have to be an appeal or a demand in order to keep Hong Kong cinema as we know it going.
The “China factor,” so to speak, is the big elephant in the room. It increasingly dictates all aspects of production, including language-choice, market selection, funding, setting, plot, character relationships, and depictions of sexuality, etc. Be it neoliberal citizenship and masculinity in the diaspora that subsumes queer sociality (Audrey Yue, Chapter 12), cosmopolitan feminism with an encyclopedic inclusiveness of all manners of women’s issues in the work of veteran filmmaker Ann Hui (Gina Marchetti, Chapter 10), or the insistent attention to local history and culture in some of the recent films (Helen Leung, Chapter 11), the “ur-sign” of “China” is everywhere, more palpable and more physical.
The future of Hong Kong cinema appears to hinge on this master sign, where, the sign will be realized as the label, under which Hong Kong cinema may eventually be subsumed. We all know that the China label is highly marketable in the global context. At the same time, the rising China will increasingly take on its role as a new agent who bestows and withholds recognition. Within this emergent politics of recognition, Hong Kong cinema may paradoxically be re-centered by becoming Chinese. Whether as a marketable label or as the agent of recognition, “China” may already be inextricably tied to financial reward and global recognition of Hong Kong cinema.
As I see it, there are several scenarios for the future of Hong Kong cinema: 1) it will gradually become integrated into Chinese cinema and it will no longer have a distinct identity; 2) it will somehow maintain its identity even in the context of co-productions and mainlandization; 3) it will insist on maintaining its identity by the sheer effort of love. To cultivate Hong Kong cinema in the second and third scenarios will require love, lots of it. Loving Hong Kong cinema therefore has now become a demand, lest the incredible creativity and inventiveness of this cinema falls into a fate similar to that of Vancouver, where Hong Kong cinema becomes “a service provider for the needs of a far more powerful cinema across the border” (Helen Leung).