city on fire
review
PACIFIC READER
JASON SANDERS
FALL 1999
CITY ON FIRE: Hong Kong Cinema
By Lisa Odham Stokes
and Michael Hoover
Verso, 372 pages
Hong Kong Cinema Examined In Political and Social Context
Hong Kong cinema has emerged as one of the most recognizable film
movements to hit America in years, and for better or worse has spawned a
cottage industry of people more than ready to publish their views and
review on a world they mainly know through a theater screen or a VCR.
Fan groups have sprung up over Jackie Chan or Chow Yun-fat, internet
sites are devoted to the films of Tsui Hark, magazines display
full-color interviews with Maggie Chueng - and everywhere you turn,
you'll discover someone a little too anxious to go on and on about Wong
Kar-wai.
From out of this welter of heart-felt proclamation, well-meaning
pointers or simple fanboy ravings, comes City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema
by Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover, which refreshingly treats the
films not merely as objects to consume and devour, but rather as works
which can and should be placed in an appropriate political and social
context. More importantly, it also opens up the horizons of Hong Kong
film, going beyond the usual gangster and fantasy films to analyze key
comedies, melodramas and art films which are rarely discussed. While
certainly not the last word on the Hong Kong of the 1980s and 1990s, it
can at least be recommended for being one of the first.
After a brief overview of the history of Hong Kong and its film
industry, the authors turn their focus on the era from 1984-1998,
arguing that political uncertainties and events - such as the 1984 Joint
Declaration (1984), Tiananmen Square (1989) and the 1997 handover of
Hong Kong from Britain to China - combined with the area's breathtaking
economic growth to create a metaphorical "city on fire," which
is played out in its cinematic representations.
As befitting as "land of commerce" Hong Kong films are
examined in the ways they consciously or unconsciously reflect issues of
class, capital and commodification, with close Marxist analyses applied
to key scenes, texts and interviews. Though it is unusual to see Jackie
Chan and quotes from "Labor and Capital" in the same
paragraph, the points are well written and strongly argued, and unveil a
fascinating glimpse into the mechanisms of the industry and its
creations. The book, however, is disappointingly silent on how these
power structures, and others such as funding or censorship, may or may
not have influenced the near-vacuum in social commentary or protest
within Hong Kong cinema. The authors also miss an opportunity to examine
how Hong Kong films have been marketed in the West, and to discuss Hong
Kong cinema's role as a miniature colonizer of other Asian countries,
where it has often dominated native film industries and markets.
Other problems arise with the authors secondary point of contention,
that the specter of the 1997 handover can be seen or felt in nearly
every film. Handover anxiety - and the threats of dislocation, loss and
upheaval that it presented - become the explanation for films involving
said dislocation, loss or upheaval, or even scene with similar traumas,
and is recycled too often.
Their arguments are further weakened by the seemingly random
construction of the later chapters. A chapter of new wave filmmakers of
the 1980s leads to a discovery that their works demonstrate longing and
displacement, which shifts the discussion to a gangster film with a
"displace" heroine, then ends with a quick look at working
class characters.
Another chapter begins with gender issues, stops for a look at
transgender films, takes a sudden detour into the role of food in film,
randomly throws in an analysis of the industry parody "Viva
Erotica," and finally examines the career of comedian Stephen Chiau.
Each of these topics could be given far more attention and care; the
last few chapters read as if the authors were rushing to squeeze their
last thoughts in before their word count expired.
These flaws notwithstanding, City on Fire is a long-awaited, serious
look at Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, one whose scope and
breadth help illuminate genres and figures too often overlooked in
contemporary film histories. Hopefully it will trigger other serious
examinations of a movement that has finally attained its rightful place
in the history of world cinema.
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