Southwards and Outwards: Representing Chineseness in New Locations in Hong Kong Films
Southwards and Outwards: Representing Chineseness in New Locations in Hong Kong Films
This chapter examines films that represent these two moments when a concern with relocation and thus new locations pressed upon the inhabitants of Hong Kong, hence opening up a discussion about Chineseness. It argues that a gradual and sometimes reluctant recognition of the diversity of Chineseness manifested itself in the acknowledgment of the local, specifically of Hong Kong itself. It then discusses films that imagine a Chinese diaspora moving beyond the confines of Hong Kong especially in reaction to 1997. In these films, a move towards a fictive unity based on a common ethnic identity is made as new locations replace Hong Kong as home. However, this unity is undermined as the films consistently explore the meaning of diaspora with a sharp eye on the cracks that run through the “sameness-in-dispersal” that Ien Ang has characterized as the dominant construction especially in Chinese diasporic imaginations.
Keywords: films, Hong Kong, Chineseness, diaspora, fictive unity, ethnic identity
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