Elaborate on the representations of diasporic identities in films

 

 

Theresa Fung & Mak Chun Kit

Definition

Breaking up & scattering of a people

Migration

Dispersion & Displacement

Settling far away from ancestral homeland

 

Concepts

Desire to create & maintain discrete identification
[racial/ ethnic/ cultural]

Considered part of bigger whole/ imagined past

Creation of 3^rd space

[merge of host & homeland culture]

Identity Process

Cultural conflict

Synthesis

Ethnocentrism

Globalisation

Spatial & cultural boundaries blurred

Challenges concept of ‘home’

Poly-diasporic ids

Postmodern generation

Experiences through representation

 

Background Info

Put Hong Kong on map of world art cinema

Cannes Film Festival Best Director 1997

2 HK citizens’ South American adventures

Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung) & Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung) as gay lovers visiting Iguazu Falls

On/ off love affair with new beginnings

 

Establishing Scene

Opening shot zooms in on travel documents
‘British nationality’

Free travel to most UK countries vs.
PR status

Uncertainty of national id

[HK/ China/ Britain/ Argentina]

 

Lack of assimilation of Chinese in Argentine society

No real contact b/w Chinese & natives

Only in background

Chinese youth playing soccer game themselves

No effort to integrate

Chinese as cultural misfits & sexual mismatches

 

Liaoning Street – province in NE China

Taipei street as mapping of geopolitical imaginary of the Chinese nation

Fragmented collective of Chinese nations heightens displacement of ethnic Chinese

Lai hears of death of Deng Xiaoping

[who attempted to lay the groundwork for unification of Taiwan & China under HK model of ‘1 country 2 systems’]

Diasporic characters linked to ‘roots’
in real and imagined space & time

 

Mention of returning to home

[HK & Taipei]

Windows & doors motif provide sense of dislocation

Sense of claustrophobia

Assimilation signs

Learning Tango/ Horse racing/ Work progress/ soccer game

 

Part shot in b/w part shot in radiant colour

Fast speed of camera shots of skyline and busy intersections of city

Visual & structural discontinuities and editing differences within same narrative reveal a more pervasive & existential reality

Fragmented, atomized nature of urban life in diasporic conditions

 

"The challenge for the solitary HK/ Chinese globetrotters not to be lost in temporal discontinuity and spatial dislocation but to connect and reconnect themselves with some sense of homeland and discover a destination, however transitory it may turn out to be."

Sheldon H. Lu

Ambiguous ending – impending doom vs. a new beginning

 

 

"Self and Other" Theory

Chan family

‘idea of otherness as an inner compulsion’

No essential cultural identity

Other position self imposed

State of mind

No real proof of Othering

Bing’s notion of ‘self’

Humorous mental point of view

Shift in state of mind

Ma & Pa reach 3^rd space

Beyond Self and Other identities

Denouement of diaspora course

 

Liu Awaiting Spring

The Butcher

Joy Luck Club

 

Cognitive qualities of diaspora not limited by land boundaries, but by culture

Conflicting cultural identity not linked to physical displacement

Ethnic Other brings Liu to terms with his place

 

Reverse Diaspora

Home video

Sense of displacement from non-native country

 

Sinicism – "one China, one people, and one culture"

Descendant’s roots in China’s culture

Sense of displacement passed through generations

 

The Matrix

Extending diasporic concepts

Characters representative of diaspora mindset

Sense of displacement vs. reality of dislocation

Need to reconcile, intellectually and emotionally, contradictions

Neo – displaced from 21^st century Sydney; dislocated to future (Zion)

Cypher cannot reconcile conflicting cultures

Blade Runner

 

Diaspora is a state of mind.