This article talks about the “ghosts” in an urban setting, Hong Kong, a highly dense and populated city. Ghost can appear in social life in multiple forms. Specifically, one of the forms is that ghosts exist when people experience a failure to attain their goals and dreams. This can be originated from people’s sadness, as one primary aspect that causes the “ghosts.” Ghost films are mostly made in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. In terms of Hong Kong, it has a relatively liberal film industry, people can talk about some controversial and sensitive topics that are banned in mainland China;

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Scared of confronting our past and facing the future, we represent the ghosts in ghost movies. Especially living in a modernistic, glamorized city like Hong Kong where everything is happening everywhere all at once, as the city grows, so does the fear of loneliness and social isolation of those who are socially and culturally marginalized. Despite us not being physically alone in this highly-packed, densely-populated city, we feel socially alone. In many ways, that could be even scarier than being physically alone. Apt (2006) provides us with a horror perspective of social loneliness from the protagonist’s disturbing experience in her

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City ghosts remind us that the strange is born out of the familiar. From the reading, the settings of ghost films are closely related to the local economic situation and cultural background. The hidden themes of ghost films are usually circumstances or things that people are facing or fear of. Ghost films are separated into three types in the reading. For those produced in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, the theme of films is living with ghosts. For Japan and South Korea, the theme is loneliness and urban isolation. For Bangkok, the theme is ghosts who are pursuing dreams. Take

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In this article, the author talks about ghosts in the urban context. In Chinese beliefs, ghosts roam the Earth if they have been denied a proper burial. However, the scarcity of land in Hong Kong makes a grave become a luxury. Also, apartments are divided to many tiny cubicles, which makes them look like ’coffin homes’. That’s why housing in Hong Kong can align with ghost stories and most ghost films are made in Hong Kong. Moreover, the living environment in Hong Kong contributes to social isolation. The loneliness of apartment ghosts mirrors the loneliness of humans. The declining social significance

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After reading In Search of the Ghostly in Context by Fruit Chan, I had more thoughts toward the relationship between Hong Kong urban context and movies. First of all, ghosts in Chan’s films most likely represent despair and disorientation.  One of his movies, Made in Hong Kong 1997 was released in 1997, which was around the time of the Handover of Hong Kong, thus, Hong Kong people at that time were feeling lost, they either moved away, or the Chinese mainlanders moving in to look for economic opportunities. Therefore, ghosts in Chan’s movies most likely relate to the negative emotions

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The article is about the “aura” of the architecture and the surroundings in urban cities where ghosts are presented, and the way ghosts are illustrated in the movies. I think what the writer said sums up the entire article perfectly, “Ghosts are more visible than the living” There are also continuous comparisons between eastern and western movies in the above points, that show how ghosts are depicted in urban space. Aura of the architecture In western horror movies, the protagonist lives in a mansion or an isolated house somewhere in a rural space. People would expect the house to be

Continue readingReading Response: Katarzyna Ancuta