Arresting Cinema

Surveillance in Hong Kong Film

Karen Fang

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781503600706, 9780804798914
• eBook ISBN: 9781503600751
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

When Ridley Scott envisioned Blade Runner's set as "Hong Kong on a bad day," he nodded to the city's overcrowding as well as its widespread use of surveillance. But while Scott brought Hong Kong and surveillance into the global film repertoire, the city's own cinema has remained outside of the global surveillance discussion.

In Arresting Cinema, Karen Fang delivers a unifying account of Hong Kong cinema that draws upon its renowned crime films and other unique genres to demonstrate Hong Kong's view of surveillance. She argues that Hong Kong's films display a tolerance of—and even opportunism towards—the soft cage of constant observation, unlike the fearful view prevalent in the West. However, many surveillance cinema studies focus solely on European and Hollywood films, discounting other artistic traditions and industrial circumstances. Hong Kong's films show a more crowded, increasingly economically stratified, and postnational world that nevertheless offers an aura of hopeful futurity. Only by exploring Hong Kong surveillance film can we begin to shape a truly global understanding of Hitchcock's "rear window ethics."

INDEX

Page numbers followed by f indicate material in figures.

Abbas, Ackbar, 23, 29, 31, 83

Aberdeen, 131

academic cinema studies, 6–8, 128

Aces Go Places series, 24–25 (25f), 51, 111, 175n37

acid attacks, 152, 157

action/crime films around reunification, 179n2; Cageman themes, 84–87 (85f, 87f); changing views of mainlanders, 70–71; Chungking Express themes, 88–90 (90f); Cold War influence on, 68; defensive hi-tech surveillance in, 61, 72–77 (72f, 73f), 83; depicting mainland criminals, 62–65 (64f), 70–71, 74–75; dystopianism in, 59–60, 70; effect of Tiananmen Square on, 63, 78; “fortress architecture” in, 78–79; impossibility of escape, 64; interest in local history, 83–84; misunderstandings of, 70–72; portrayal of CCTV in, 74–78 (77f); precedents for, 70; showing police authority concerns, 113–116 (115f); Western scholarship on, 61, 65–69

adaptations. See remakes

Ah Chan, 71, 96, 97

Ah Fei films, 60, 88

Air Hostess, 69–70

Always on My Mind, 43

American countersurveillance, 136

Another Chinese Cop, 96

Anti-Corruption, 101–102, 104, 188n21

anti-reflectionism, 67–68, 181n7

arresting, as metaphor, 30–31, 110f, 176n44

Arrest of a Pickpocket, The, 1

Arrest the Restless, 91

Ashes of Time, 88

Asian American characters, 141

Asia Pictures, 69

Assassin, The, 129

As Tears Go By, 88

ATM POV shots, 80–82 (82f), 183n30

Backyard Adventures, 3–6 (4f–6f), 9, 23, 170n7

Banana Cop, 118–120 (119f), 191n42

ban jian fang (baan gaan fong), 12

Bank of China building, 63–64

Battle of Algiers, The, 2

bed-space dwellings, 60, 85

Below the Lion Rock, 107

Berlin, 132, 195n22

Better Tomorrow, A: burning US hundred-dollar bill, 104; characters mugging for security cameras, 72 (72f); Chinese title ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: A Race of Peeping Toms? “Rear Window Ethics” in Hong Kong
• One. Watching the Watchman: Michael Hui’s Surveillance Comedies
• Two. On the “China Watch”: Prosperity and Paranoia in Reunification-Era Cinema
• Three. “Only” a Policeman: Joint Venture Cinema and the Mediatization of the Hong Kong Police
• Four. “Representing the Chinese Government”: Hong Kong Undercover in an Age of Self-Censorship
• Conclusion: Toward a Global Surveillance Cinema
• Appendix: Chinese Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index