Narratives of absence and presence in Hollywood and Hong Kong films of the 1950s and 1960s
Wendy Gan
School of English, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
KEYWORDS
Hong Kong • Southeast Asia • film • regionalization • exoticism • tropical
Despite being subtropical, Hong Kong, in both Hollywood and Hong Kong films of the 1950s and 1960s, is often filmically represented as tropical. This subtle climatic elision, I argue, holds a particular political valence that varies according to filmic tradition. In Hollywood narratives, Hong Kong's tropicality is a means to exoticize and, ultimately, marginalize the realities of the local. It is a way to turn Hong Kong's physical presence into an absence. In Hong Kong films in that same cold war environment, the relative blandness of the city is an attempt to realign its film industry with the free nations of Southeast Asia. For Hong Kong films, the strategy of tropicalization was thus a means to turn away from China and redefine Hong Kong as part of a network of capitalist, modern, overseas Chinese cities located in the sunny tropics of Southeast Asia.
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The above text is from a special issue on cinematic representations of the tropical urban/city in:
Published Online: 13 Mar 2008
Journal compilation © 2009 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd
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