Liang Luo
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424592
- eISBN:
- 9781474444705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424592.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic ...
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Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic origins of Hong Kong horror cinema. This chapter surveys the changing representation of gender and horror in a series of films based on the White Snake legend from the 1920s to the 1970s. Centred on a very horrific concept (a monstrous snake disguised as a beauty and married to a human male), these films nonetheless enrich or even challenge our understanding of the genre of horror cinema in their service to a wide range of other genres: operatic performance, romantic melodrama, fantasy adventure, slapstick comedy, and social and political commentary. In addition to challenging the very concept of horror, this cluster of White Snake films poses further challenges to the idea of “Hong Kong cinema,” as it ranges from a Tokyo production, a Shanghai production, a Hong Kong-Japan coproduction, to a production based in Hong Kong with South Asian distributors, and a Hong Kong-Taiwan coproduction with a Shaw Brothers director.Less
Considered one of the four legends in the Chinese oral tradition, the legend of the White Snake and its theatrical and popular cultural metamorphoses played an important role in the pre-cinematic origins of Hong Kong horror cinema. This chapter surveys the changing representation of gender and horror in a series of films based on the White Snake legend from the 1920s to the 1970s. Centred on a very horrific concept (a monstrous snake disguised as a beauty and married to a human male), these films nonetheless enrich or even challenge our understanding of the genre of horror cinema in their service to a wide range of other genres: operatic performance, romantic melodrama, fantasy adventure, slapstick comedy, and social and political commentary. In addition to challenging the very concept of horror, this cluster of White Snake films poses further challenges to the idea of “Hong Kong cinema,” as it ranges from a Tokyo production, a Shanghai production, a Hong Kong-Japan coproduction, to a production based in Hong Kong with South Asian distributors, and a Hong Kong-Taiwan coproduction with a Shaw Brothers director.
Kenneth Chan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424592
- eISBN:
- 9781474444705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424592.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Through a close analysis of Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), this chapter argues that the film’s successful appeal to local and global Chinese ...
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Through a close analysis of Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), this chapter argues that the film’s successful appeal to local and global Chinese audiences is based on a conservative reading of the familiar cultural trope of modernity versus tradition, as mirrored in the supposed tensions between the police procedural and the horror/supernatural elements in the wuxia shenguai genre. These tensions are problematic precisely because their narrative and rhetorical purpose is to shore up the deterministic logic of Chinese cultural history, the interpellative call of Chinese political power, and the cultural nationalist logic of being Chinese. However, the film is also capable to generating counter-readings of its politics by recasting itself as a global cinematic text of political irony and oppositional resistance.Less
Through a close analysis of Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), this chapter argues that the film’s successful appeal to local and global Chinese audiences is based on a conservative reading of the familiar cultural trope of modernity versus tradition, as mirrored in the supposed tensions between the police procedural and the horror/supernatural elements in the wuxia shenguai genre. These tensions are problematic precisely because their narrative and rhetorical purpose is to shore up the deterministic logic of Chinese cultural history, the interpellative call of Chinese political power, and the cultural nationalist logic of being Chinese. However, the film is also capable to generating counter-readings of its politics by recasting itself as a global cinematic text of political irony and oppositional resistance.