Tag: Reading response

Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 6: Housing Stories

[Reading Response 2] Communal After-Living: Asian Ghosts and the City by Katarzyna Ancuta

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This article explores the relationship between the presence of ghosts in Asian cities and urban residents. The author argues that in Asian cultures, because of their roots in animistic beliefs, ghosts and humans have always existed in the same world. Therefore, if the city is to be seen as a symbol of normalcy, Asian cities must accommodate ghosts to coexist with their inhabitants. Houses haunted by ghosts are characterized by neglect, strange habits, and failed rituals of order and maintenance, while apartments haunted by ghosts represent the mundane and ordinary aspects of city life. Unlike houses, apartments often lack a

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Reading response 2 Communal After-Living: Asian Ghosts and the City-Katarzyna Ancuta

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The essay discusses the relationship between urban environments, Asian cultures, and the presence of ghosts. The article also discusses a very interesting concept about “living ghosts”. In ghost movies in Asian cities, there is a clear distinction between the apartment where the living ghost is located and the traditional haunted house. Traditional haunted houses often have clear boundaries that should not be broken and are often associated with a specific family or person. In contrast, living ghosts in apartments are linked to factors such as economic status, social isolation, or health problems that make the ghosts in the apartment not

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[READING RESPONSE 2] L7 Oh No, There Goes Tokyo

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“What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.”——Friedrich Nietzsche Since World War II, Tokyo seems to be more often depicted as the object of destruction, which may related to Tokyo’s historical disaster experience, reflecting Japan’s postwar society’s trauma and uneasy emotions about war and nuclear weapons. Japanese films and movies reflect the state of mind of the Japanese people to a certain extent – a contradictory state of mind that combines pessimism and optimism. On the one hand, the scars that the war has burned on them and the horror and darkness of the movie image can be seen as a

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[READING RESPONSE] L6 Communal After-Living: Asian Ghosts and the City by Katarzyna Ancuta

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The article emphasizes the need for Asian cities to accommodate ghosts as an integral part of their urban fabric. It highlights the cultural and socio-economic factors that shape the portrayal of ghosts in Asian urban contexts and explores the themes of community, isolation, and migration through the lens of Asian horror cinema. And I will discuss how Asian cities adapt to the presence of ghosts and the living, and the impact on public life and urban mindsets in the context of urbanization and socio-cultural dynamics. The accommodation of ghosts in Asian cities has several implications for communal living and the

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 6: Housing Stories

[READING RESPONSE #2] In Search of the Ghostly in Context by Cheung

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In the chapter titled “In Search of the Ghostly in Context,” Cheung offers an insightful analysis of space-time dislocation. He critiques governmental inaction in public housing conditions, addresses the struggles faced by the lower and middle working classes, and extends his discussion to the wider socio-political landscape in Hong Kong during its era of transition, through which he skillfully employed the symbolism of the ‘ghost’ and cinematic techniques. Cheung conveys themes of marginalization, homelessness, and despair among Hong Kong’s working class in Chan’s films though employing subtle language and symbolism. Specifically, the depiction of houses as ‘prison houses’ and the

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 1: Architecture, Film & The Modern City

[Reading Response] Roland Barthes

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In “Leaving the Movie Theater,” the author describes his departure from the cinema in a dazed and hypnotic state, seeking a sense of healing and likening the experience to entrancing orchestral music. He enters the movie theater with the desire to feel hypnotized even before the film begins, finding the entire cinematic experience to be the source of his lethargy. The author uses rich vocabulary to describe the entire experience; when the theater darkens, the anticipation before the film, and the immersion of the audience into the world of the film. The power of cinema is able to evoke a

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 3: The Post-war Asian City as Set

[Reading Response] : ‘URBAN CINEMA AND THE CULTURAL IDENTITY OF HONG KONG’ by Leung Ping-kwan

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  ‘URBAN CINEMA AND THE CULTURAL IDENTITY OF HONG KONG’ written by Leung Ping-Kwan unravels a group of films and their respective interpretations of culture in Hong Kong, during which the writer raises the issue of housing prices and space. Especially rent prices. This piqued my interest as someone returning to Hong Kong after one and a half decades away. During which, the housing market saw a 160% increase. ‘Space is Gold’, filmed in the 1950s illustrates the aforementioned problems. The film details the struggles of a dockyard worker’s relationship with a greedy landlady as well as “people conversing under

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 4: Everyday Spaces as Narrative

[Reading response] Cuts Through Hong Kong by Eunice Seng (2020)

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In the paper “Cuts through Hong Kong”, the author discussed Wong Kar-Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love, which masterfully captures a moment of transition in 1960s Hong Kong through its intricate spatial and temporal collage structure. What captured my attention is the film’s reflection on the inevitability of change. I think setting the background of the movie in the 1960s is very important because it showcases how much Hong Kong has changed since that time period. Landscape, economy, politics – none of these escape the fate of transformation. In my view, change in most scenarios is a good

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[Reading Response] :‘Cuts through Hong Kong’ by Eunice Seng

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Ho Tsz Hei 3036193059   The text ‘Cuts through Hong Kong’ by professor Seng, demonstrates the film ‘In the Mood for Love’ by Wong Kar Wai on how interior and exterior of spatial collage with transition spaces implies in the film, echoing the relationship between Chow and Su.   I chose a specific aspect of the concept of ‘borrowed time’ to demonstrate film. To tell the entire story, Wong creates a collage of fragmented scenes. He frequently repeated transitional spaces in scenes, such as the interior staircase and corridor inside the Tong Lau and the exterior staircases of the back

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Asian City

[READING RESPONSE] LEO OU-FAN LEE

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This article looks into the parallelism between the entrance of cinema and Western influence in Shanghai and how it impacted the urban environment of the city. We currently live in a global developed society. However what happened to cities as international exchange accelerated back in the 1930s? The reading explains that there was a changed understanding upon what a modern urban environment was. Theaters started to get built in the Western architectural style and high end theaters only showed Hollywood films, demonstrating a subtle transmission of Western influence into the city’s constructive scenery. This visual change of the architectural landscape

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