Chan Sum Kie Dorcas u3579263
The past, to me, is incredibly fascinating. The world where people lived harmoniously without the distractions of technology and enjoyed nature’s breeze every day, the freshness and freedom made the past seem like the ideal world to live in. I often crave songs from my parents’ (or even grandparents’) generation. One would think that things from past generations may be outdated, but in reality, the comments under old music videos are filled with youngsters like me who don’t even belong in the generation. Comments like “reliving my nonexistent 70/80/90s memories” are usually the top comments with hundreds to thousands of likes. Although the reason why this phenomenon is happening may be because people from past generations may not be as familiar with the Internet, so they don’t dominate the comments section. However, with the rising popularity of vintage aesthetic or fashion amongst gen z, it is evident that our obsession with the past is worsening.
But is the past really the past? Do we really feel “nostalgia” for something that is so distant to us that we’ve never even experienced before? Abbas’s analysis of disappearance and preservation proved how our imagination of the past may be manipulated or twisted. In his words, preservation is selective and tends to exclude the dirt and pain. Colonial architecture may be extravagant and eye-catching in the middle of our concrete forest, we love to take pictures of it and enjoy high tea inside the revitalised interior. It gives us the idea of royalty and leisure, but that’s not what these buildings define in their times. Just like how Tai Kwun is now almost like a part of Soho, most of the insides were taken out and refilled with expensive restaurants of all cuisines and fancy art exhibitions. But it was a former police station as policemen’s dormitories and criminals’ cells.
Unlike architecture, I don’t only get mesmerised by films’ design or aesthetic beauty, but also the full experience it gives me. As film usually presents us with a story where characters directly interact with the space, it makes it easier for us to imagine ourselves inside it. My current favourite movie is the iconic Dirty Dancing, where it shows a couple’s maturing and self-growth while enjoying their passion for dancing. The freedom and seemingly carefree lives of the youngsters and their natural yet cosy living environments makes me feel homey and like I once belonged there. But a dancer like Johnny from that time may have way worse living conditions and may never have such a perfect ending. Of course, directors didn’t allow that in the name of entertainment. Abbas mentioned how nostalgia is not the return of past memory, but the return of memory to the past. I don’t remember these past times but I am brought to the “past” through film and it’s depictions. But since I’ve never been a part of the past, these depictions easily morph my imagination of it.
In the current day and age, we increasingly gloss over things to make things more acceptable or palatable. How historical monuments are revitalised and how films bowdlerise events or past conditions, it certainly fulfils our fascinations and ideologies of there being a time and space where things are better. We are breaking the past before it breaks us, so maybe preservation isn’t as attainable as we think.
A very well-written reflection of the past and nostalgia! Often in our generation, we sees the 70-90s as a “very Hong Kong” moment of the city – Sam Hui, being one of the icons of that era, sang songs of positivity about grassroot hardships, celebrating colloquial Cantonense etc. Often, I wonder if the reason for our obsession of the past generation’s collective memory is our fascination with the “other” – the “other” non-existent memory that we have not experienced; or simply the fact that we can still relate to them in similar ways. Abbas saw the the vernacular baroque as the “very elegant answer” to deal with the former, which involves “no more radical transformation of the vernacular”; “[d]iversity,[…] not in terms of a profusion of architectural styles, but in the internal modification of standardized forms” ; and “accept[ing] the proliferation of anonymous high-rise blocks as the only solution” (1997, 89). Likewise, in the hyperdensity of banality and homogeneity, people seek to adapt to this life and such ability to appropriate is perhaps the identity of Hong Kongers. Would love to know your thoughts on this.