Category: Lecture 6: Housing Stories

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Moving House (2001)

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“After development comes redevelopment” as a way of life where the dead people are also affected to be moved is sad. Tradition cannot be maintained because of the government planning of lands; the dead parents “moving” from a larger “house” to a smaller “house” which is the columbarium. The exhumation exercises that are shown in the video is is uncanny and creepy, and let us know how a dense city means the cityscape and way of living is ever changing and full of uncertainty. -3036237831

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Moving House Reflection – HAW Jane

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As the population of Singapore grows, gaining an ownership of a grave will be more difficult. Families of the deceased would be forced to relocate the remains somewhere else. Some might be unsatisfied with this as they think the land used for leisure purposes can be used for the dead, but other may think that relocating the dead near their loved ones is fortunate

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Lecture 6 Exercise – Reflection (Anvesha Bajpai)

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The switching between the older black and white clip of the new Singaporean Housing complex – which showcased the building – and the switching to the modern-day look of the complex, which looked old and run down, created an eerie feeling surrounding old ideas that were once considered revolutionary, becoming outdated and irrelevant to modern day problems. To strengthen this feeling, the director used contrasting sounds. During the old video, the non-diegetic sound consisted of orchestral music which created a sense of accomplishment surrounding the housing complex. In contrast, the modern-day footage consisted of diegetic of cars and other city

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Reading Response: Katarzyna Ancuta

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In Asian ghost films, “apartment horror” is conjured by monotonous concrete cubicles and inexorable, impersonal domestic spaces. It conveys the physical and social mobility (or lack thereof) with respect to the inhabitants in these airless, natural light-less interiors. Experience of tension and constriction between the architecture and human tenants is allegorically shared by the ghostly tenants, bounded to a specific apartment and a specific anthropomorphic mien, albeit non-entity in theory. Such parallel represents how we read ghostly narratives as Asians: our past carried and constituted into the afterlife, or Karma. When urban legends of wild, wandering, expectedly wronged spirits seek

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Reading Response: Ancuta K.

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Ancuta’s reading focuses on the role “ghost” plays in city, especially in the context of Asian cultures. City life in Asian countries have a set of unique characteristics, including tight and limited living spaces, unfamiliarity between neighbors and busy working and communal life in general. These characteristics are reflected in ghost films, according to Ancuta, in a very special way. Ancuta names it as “Asian apartment horror,” as most of the ghost films take place in apartment buildings. Hong Kong ghost films are excellent examples of “Living with Ghosts.” Along with the complicated Chinese afterlife beliefs, Hong Kong becomes one

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Reading Response: Ancuta, K.

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I think the relationship between ghosts and housing in hong kong is interesting as hong kong horror films have a unique strong linkage to a collective or a community, while foreign ghost films do not. Housing in Hong Kong thematically aligns with ghost stories in many ways, ghost can be a concretization of the anxieties and fears of residents in public housing. The living condition of public housing is often poor. The interior is dark and the spaces are cramped, which creates a sense of anxiety. The feeling of living in this poorly developed estate is presented in a visible

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Reading Response: Katarzyna Ancuta

Posted on kiraxuan@connect.hku.hk

This essay illustrates the influence of architectural features, economics, society and culture on ghost films in different Asian countries. Apart from the creepy atmosphere that Hong Kong’s dense, depressing houses can give, there is also how people are distorted and how they choose to be under the repression of Chinese rituals, superstition, kinship and so on. At the heart of Chinese horror is a sense of repression, a sense of oppression, a manifestation of powerlessness and one’s own denial of oneself. Unlike Western ghost films, where the fear of demons, monsters or ghosts, etc., Asian ghost films often have no

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[Reading Response: Katarzyna Ancuta]

Posted on beryltan@connect.hku.hk

It is worth discussing that horror films and what ghosts represent in them are different according to region. Western films often take the strong visual impact of plasma and corpses as the main selling point, while most Asian ghost films focus on the creation of suspense and horror atmosphere, with a focus on psychological horror.  The reason why ghosts stay in the human world in Asianstories is mainly resentment and unfulfillment when they are still alive. Following that feeling, the common feature in haunting plots in East Asia is set in a prosperous capital society, with a large population of lower-income class. For example, in Hong Kong horror films, the low-income class

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[Reading Response: Ancuta, K.]

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I really like Ancuta’s metaphor of ghost in this context, where the reading is discussing literal ghost movies but “ghost” is also reflective of the characters’ psychological states. The reading mentions how “ghosts” can be a representation of a failed dream of economic success, very much referring to the struggling grassroots of prosperous cities. This idea also reminds me of the western novel The Great Gatsby, where characters in the working class live in a wasteland called The Valley of ashes. Ashes are metaphors for their futile efforts of trying to climb up the social ladder, which is similar to

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Reading Response: Ancuta and Cheung

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In Ancuta’s paper, there are three main interconnected statements made through studying the architectural spaces in three types of Asian horror movies. From Hong Kong’s movies, the disconnection between the housing and the land, and transient ownership caused by overpopulation, we found that actually the ghosts in condominiums are ourselves. While the similarity between human and ghosts is beyond the anthropomorphic forms but lies in the unbearable loneliness, we realised that “we need ghost as much as they need us”. Further, Bangkok’s case, the ghosts metaphorize the decimation of dreams of Thai’s population pursuing success, this is the destroy of

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