Spatializing Hong Kong (Mar 27)

1. Mapping Hong Kong
1.1. The unity of Hong Kong as a city doesn't exist.
1.2. Mapping Hong Kong is one of the ways of representing Hong Kong
1.3. Wong Kar-wai said,

"Many people ask me if Chungking is a love letter I wrote to Hong Kong. But I'm not that romantic. To me it feels like a diary or a map. All the scenes were shot according to the logic of the place. If you go to Hong Kong after seeing Chungking Express, you won't get lost."
(Cameron Bailey 1997; quoted from Huang 2000 )

References: 丹尼斯．渥德（Wood, Dennis）1996. <<地圖權力學>>（The Power of Maps）台北：時報．

1.4. Analysis of mise-en-scene: Focusing on how the scenes are framed and staged for envisioning a city space.
1.5. Two kinds of mapping:
1.5.1. The bird-eye view (Example: West Kowloon Cultural District)
1.5.2. The view of flaneur/ flaneuse（遊蕩者）: The camera's eye
1.6. The importance of spatial representation
1.6.1. Our understanding and perception are more affected by representations of space than direct experience.
1.6.2. Visual representations of space become more important to our urban experience
1.6.3. City as a phantasmagoria [全景幻象] (Walter Benjamin)
-Arcades-shopping mall-tourist site (e.g. Avenue of Stars)
-Theme parks (Disneyland)
-Consuming places (曾少千2003＜我買故我在＞)

2. Colonial mapping and local mappings
2.1. My Son A-chang (1950)
2.2. Hong Kong as a grassroots society, a dwelling place for the poor, street kid and criminal (disc A: 6:40)

2.2. The World of Suzie Wong (1960):
2.2.1. Hong Kong: Victoria Harbour
2.2.2. Hong Kong: fishing boat
2.2.3. Hong Kong: a crowded city

2.3. The World of Wong Kar-wai
2.3.1. Old buildings
2.3.2. Local restaurants
2.3.3. Chungking Mansion: a slum-like building
2.3.4. A corner of Central

3. Fruit Chan : Made in Hong Kong
3.1. Made in Hong Kong (香港製造，1997)
3.2. The internal structure of the high-rise public housing block
3.3. Young people's experience in this space: ordinary, local, alienated and being abandoned (disc A: 28:50)
3.4. A space of desire (a beautiful woman, protection and death)
3.5. Hong Kong: A space is dying in 1997 (disc B: 43:14).

4. Fruit Chan: Little Cheung(細路祥，2000)
4.1. Fruit Chan's local experience of community: Yau Ma Tei, old tenement buildings, alleys, local restaurant, ... ..."a world of money"
4.2. Little Cheung (1950): The local and alienated experience of "Chinese-ness"
4.3. Little Cheung (2000): A nostaglic story of local community and collective memory.
4.4. A cinematic tradition: Little Cheung-Bruce Lee-Brother Cheung (祥哥／新馬師曾／鄧永祥)- Little Cheung
4.5. Hong Kong is represented as a multicultural and grassroots community with a loose boundary: Illegal immigrant, Indian and Parkistani
4.6. Representing Hong Kong from a kid's eyes (his personal growth and the transition of Hong Kong)
4.7. The death of Brother Cheung- the death of a community- the loss of a friendship-the loss of innocence.

5. Hong Kong as an imagined and represented space
5.1. Hong Kong is represented as a nostalgic space (old-style public housing and old district)
5.2. Hong Kong, as a cultural and memorable space, is about to be fading out.
5.3. Hong Kong is represented as a grassroots community.

6. Hong Kong as a simularum(擬象): A postmodern city of pastiche and globalization
6.1. Simularum: an unreal and vague semblance
6.2. Jean Baudrillard:
6.2.1. We are living in a world constituted by simulacra!
6.2.2. Our understanding and experience of reality are replaced by simulacra produced by media and cultural institutions.
6.2.3. Example: We know about Paris through media images before we visit there.
6.2. Old Shanghai? Hong Kong? A "Sim city"?
6.3. An intertextual game of The House of 72 tenants: 王為一(1963)-楚原(1973)-周星馳(2004) (02:55)
6.4. An icon of local culture (Hong Kong and Cantonese) becomes the stage for Matrix-like fighting scenes.
6.5. Experience of local place is fading out and dissolves in postmodern game.