Representational Space, politics, class and urban Hong Kong are featured in various movies, and a brief history of domestic public housing is probed into.
Using Ghost as a movie agent not only express defamiliarization and uncanniness but introduce supernatural power that seems to be infinitely powerful in a space that belongs to powerless people (i.e. lower income groups). We witness an outburst of movies on metaphysical genre in the 70s to 90s, but its influences couldn’t be overseen. The political fear shared among community, revolving around the uncertainty and disjointed emotions raised from the future returning of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the underlying negligence towards vulnerable members by the British Government and the cultural hegemony influenced the development of dehumanized figures like Fleur in Rouge.
The scarcity of land in Hong Kong rationalizes government to eliminate undesirable houses like slums, catalyzed by the 1953 Shek Kip Mei Fire. The space was haunting the city, echoing phantoms that mentally haunts viewers. Space like public housing estate, slums are visual evidence of the backwardness of society and weakened economic benefits, thus it is thought-provoking when we consider the eradication of traditional houses for acquiring a vacant land for new development of more modernized houses like skyscraper and attracted more economic opportunities as priority rather than for promoting well-being of the whole community.
Name: Kan Nok Ming Valerie
UID: 3036233483