In the extract from Ackbar Abbas’s Global Cities, the author described cities with hyperbolised impressions as “exorbitant cities”. These cities have transformed from their original form into a completely unrecognisable identity, “representable only as the cinematic city”. Using Hong Kong as an example, Abbas discusses how the city is depicted in Western blockbuster movies. In the movies he discussed, directors used Hong Kong’s distinct skyscrapers and landscape to build a modern, exotic visual image in the audience’s minds, while suppressing the true Hong Kong beneath. More recent examples such as King Kong vs Godzilla, or going back to the old Batman also shows similar issues. Outside of Hong Kong, the “exorbitant city” problem arises in many other depictions of cities as well. Abbas describes the “exorbitant city” as “phantasmagoric”, and “labyrinthine”, which I completely agree with. While directors try to highlight a city’s distinct architectural characteristics, it buries the city’s true, genuine identity and nature away from global audiences. Personally, I think that these issues arise due to a lack of understanding of the city’s true identity of the director, which may be insulting to those who are actually from the city, as they might take it as a lack of respect for their home. Overall, this issue makes me believe that all directors should work on finding a better understanding of the setting of their stories before attempting to represent them on film, only for global audiences to misunderstand.
– Edward Ip Fung Yuen
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I appreciate that you challenged yourself by responding to how film makers present cities in their movies. You pointed out that the directors exploit the generic character of a city, like Hong Kong with its skyscrapers often being used to portray a metropolis, to liberate the movie from associations with certain cities’ identities. However, I would argue that a city can be depicted as either exorbitant or generic city depending on the director’s intention. To use Calvino’s Invisible Cities as an example, a city is multi-faceted that can be deconstructed into a variety of characteristics (which become stories in his novel). Similarly, the way certain directors present a city can be based on one of these elements, which is still considered be part of the identity of the city from the director’s lens.