China: Once upon a time/Hong Kong: 1997: Critical study of contemporary Hong Kong martial arts films

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Title:	China: Once upon a time/Hong Kong: 1997: Critical study of contemporary Hong Kong martial arts films
Authors:	楊明昱
Date:	2016-03-11
Issue Date:	2016-10-12 02:13:52 (UTC+8)
Abstract:	Martial arts films of Hong Kong are often dismissed as apolitical, ahistorical, escapist, and devoid of social critique. However, my dissertation shows that this is not the case by offering a critical reading of contemp'orary Hong Kong martial arts films. Focusing on the first three episodes of director Tsui Hark's Once upon a Time in China series (1991-1992), this study applies cultural studies to address such issues as political allegory, carnivalesque pleasures of resistance, representational politics, oppositional gendered readings, and the juxtaposition of turn-of-the century history, fiction, and contemporary politics. The series centers on the most well-known cinematic martial arts hero in Hong Kong, Huang Feihong, whose stories has been adopted in over one hundred movies since 1949. My study argues that these films can be read as a contemporary myth and political allegory in response to the crisis of 1997,when Hong Kong is to be taken over by the PRC after one century of colonial dominance. Such postmodern strategies as the incongruous juxtaposition of politics and commercialism, the recycling of antecedent and rival filmic and non-filmic texts, the maintenance and subversion of generic paradigms, and the mixing of fictional figures and events with historical ones, are contained in these films. These strategies produce an ironic rethinking of colonial history and the current political situation and a parody of the traditional hero. History and contemporary politics are thus questioned when fin de siecle Chinese history is playfully dismantled as a collage of official historical events, slippery memory, martial arts anecdotes, current political crisis, and images of popular culture.
Appears in Collections:	[Graduate Institute & Department of Mass Communication] Monograph

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