Making Culture Part I - 1 Nation 2 Systems

Week 5 - 7th August 2012

Hong Kong
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E7%BB%B4%E6%B8%AF%E5%A4%9C%E8%89%B2.jpg

  The term national culture refers to the value system and pride associated with a nation. For me, a Hong Konger, national culture is an intriguing topic to talk about. Hong Kong is one of two special administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China (also known as OneNation, Two Systems) since 1997. The period of being colonised by the British Empire greatly influenced the current culture of Hong Kong, especially the culture variations from Mainland China.

  Firstly, identity has always been an important issue to every Hong Konger since the British resumed control in 1997. During 1990s, Hong Kong residents were afraid of being part of communistic society, or felt incredulous of 1 Nation 2 Systems, led to a massive number of people leave Hong Kong and immigrant to overseas. In which, it brought a great influence to Hong Kong political cinema.

  Hong Kong films such as Bodyguards of the Last Governor 港督最後一個保鏢 (Alfred Cheung, 1996), Gigolo ofChinese Hollywood 電影鴨 (Chung Shu Kai, 1999), Lan Yu 藍宇 (Stanley Kwan, 2001), trilogy of Infernal Affairs 無間道 (Andrew Lau & Alan Mak Siu-Fai, 2002, 2003) etc., these films known as political films are all expressed such identity concern and culture variation between Hong Kong and China, similarly and metaphorically.



http://www.wjl.cn/torrentimg/c378e171c7bba7e4e7bca2de69021fd117b9b946.jpeg

  In 2004, in order to have Hong Kong and Mainland get closer together economically, Chinese state had the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangemet (CEPA) implemented with Hong Kong. In which, it also provided a door of Mainland-Hong Kong cultural exchange, apart from economic development.

"We're destined to fall for a scam or two." - Love in the Buff 2012
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tZFbqG2PuAk/0.jpg

For example, a Hong Kong domestic style films – Love in a Puff 志明與春嬌 (Pang Ho-Cheung, 2010) greatly reflected the modern culture of Hong Kong – smoking and Hong Konger’s value of love and sex; and due to the Chinese micro-blog users’ promotion, the box office of Love in a Puff was even more impressive than expected.

In 2012, the continuation of Love in a Puff, Love in the Buff 春嬌與志明 (Pang Ho-Cheung, 2012) has expanded the issue of Mainland-Hong Kong culture variation, giving different value views of love and sex from Mainlander and Hong Konger by applying few Mainland actors/actresses. Such Mainland-Hong Kong co-production indicated the usual restrictions on style and content to domestic film because of CEPA (Zhu & Nakajima, 2010).

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Reference:

Rosen, S & Zhu, Y., 2010, ‘The Evolution of Chinese Film as an Industry’, Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, pp.15-33, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong

Olympic + sponsors = Global Event??

Week 4 - 31 July 2012

  There was a debate on this week tutorial – are the Olympic a truly global event? I prefer it is a matter for one’s own perspective and angle. The Olympic could be a positive and negative global event.

http://www.london2012.com/photos/galleryid=1303934/#fireworks-off-the-tower-bridge

  Politically, what counts as a ‘global’ event? In dictionary, global refers to involve the entire earth, covering, influencing and relating to the whole world. When I was watching the athletes walk in the stadium with their national flags on the opening ceremony, the number of nation is more than enough to rise an international gaming competition, even they have a ‘nation’ for independent Olympians. It seems the game is having every single nation joined and is fair and equal.

But when I looked into the International Olympiccommittee (IOC) or Organising Committees for the Olympic Games, I bet you that those members’ nationality of these committees never equal to the number of national flags that appear on the opening ceremony. Westerner always calls for democracy, then why would the choice of the host city depend on the vote of the IOC session but not a vote of people from all around the world??



Economically, there is no doubt that sponsors and the host city are the first unit benefited from the Olympic. The Olympic Games is a heaven for advertiser, it gives an effective and glorious platform for them to globalize their product. Indeed when facing a huge expends in the Olympic, sponsorship is the best solution. But negatively, it could have issues like - Has sponsorshipspoilt the Olympic spirit?, to the Olympic. Besides, the profit made from tourism and service industry is even more impressive under the European debt crisis.

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Culturally, apart from the content of the opening ceremony, there is only cultural exchange between athletes, and athletes and the host city/country.

http://www.london2012.com/photos/galleryid=1303934/#view-the-olympic-stadium-during-the-opening-ceremony

http://www.london2012.com/photos/galleryid=1303934/#france-fans-celebrate-trafalgar-square