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Edited Volumes by Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

Archiv orientální, 2022

Archiv orientální Vol. 90 No. 3 (2022) Editors: Ta-wei Chi, Elaine Chung, and Jessica Siu-yin Ye... more Archiv orientální Vol. 90 No. 3 (2022)
Editors: Ta-wei Chi, Elaine Chung, and Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

https://aror.orient.cas.cz/index.php/ArOr/issue/view/43

An excerpt from the introduction:

“Many researchers of comedy have asked the same question: how can comedy be a form of resistance or an agent that enables resistance? The answer is never stable and straightforward. As James Brassett argues in the case of British comedy, the genre can shore up and legitimize existing structures but, in certain moments, can work towards revision and re-imagination. The research articles in this special issue precisely exemplify the “complex intersection of comedic practices and practices of resistance in different contexts,” specifically in the case of East Asian media. Some existing research has demonstrated that, from modern to contemporary times, East Asian filmmakers have resorted to laughter, satire, and parody to maneuver the limits of (self-)censorship and express resistance, insurgence, and refusal to conform to imperfect realities. Following this line of inquiry, our contributors adopt a culturalist approach to investigate how comedic subgenres, styles, and tropes have been reinvented and reinterpreted within and across localities in East Asia. Moreover, they examine these comedies’ correlation to sociopolitical changes in the region, including the collapse of the Japanese asset bubble in 1992, contested mainland-Hong Kong integration after 1997, and neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics, among others. Employing critical frameworks ranging from carnivalesque, pastiche, and cultural memory to participatory culture, their analyses examine the ways producers and consumers take on comedy to claim agencies, construct identities, and engage with the hegemonies they seek to criticize, subvert, or vanquish.”

Table of Contents

Introduction/ Ta-wei Chi, Elaine Chung, Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

Cultural Memory, the Trope of “Humble Wage Earners,” and Everyman Heroism in the Hui Brothers’ Comedies and Their Remake/ Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

Laughter Suspended: Japanese Surreal Comedy and the Ends of Progress/ David Humphrey

Neoliberal Subjectivities and Cynicism in China: Feng Xiaogang’s Dream-play Comedies/ Yung-Hang Bruce Lai

A Tale of Two Dragons: Politics of the Comedic Kung Fu Body in Chinese Cinema/ Wayne Wong

YouTube Vidding and Participatory Memories of Stephen Chow’s Stardom in South Korea/ Elaine Chung

“I wish my films would bring hopes to the spectators”: An interview with Michael Hui/ Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

City of Laughter: On the Traditions and Trends of Hong Kong Comedy Films/ Fiona Yuk-wa Law

A Brief History of Taiwanese Comedy Cinema/ George Chun Han Wang

For query about access, please contact the editors:

Ta-wei Chi (tw@g.nccu.edu.tw)
Elaine Chung (ChungE@cardiff.ac.uk)
Jessica Siu-yin Yeung (jessica_yeung@soas.ac.uk)

A book review of our issue is forthcoming in Asian Cinema winter 2023 issue by Dr Robert Hyland.

Papers by Jessica Siu-yin Yeung

With the exception of a short comparison by Sam Ho (2022, 423-4), the relationship between taiyup... more With the exception of a short comparison by Sam Ho (2022, 423-4), the relationship between taiyupian and Hong Kong Cantonese cinema is under-examined, as most research focuses on the link between Amoy films produced in Hong Kong and films produced in Hoklo in Taiwan. 1 The reason, as Ye Long-yan's seminal study of taiyupian elucidates (Ye 1999, 60), is that both Amoy and Taiyu belong to the same Southern Min linguistic group (Ye 1999, 39). It is also because Hong Kong Amoy cinema stimulated Taiwanese producers, who launched Taiyu film production on the island. However, Ye, like most conventional Taiwanese critics, often considers taiyupian from a localist perspective and perceives Hong Kong Amoy-language and Mandarin films as invaders of Taiwanese local culture. From a Hong Kong and comparative perspective, I argue that we should consider the structural similarities between the shared production conditions of taiyupian and Cantonese films and adopt a broader view on film circulation from wartime Shanghai to postwar Hong Kong and Taiwan, in Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiyu. The porosity of these competing film industries will be illustrated in this chapter with the particular example of the female spy series that spanned between 1946 and 1966, between Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. I will show that taiyupian and Cantonese films share the same sources from Chinese culture and the West. Moreover, Taiwan cinema (Taiyu and Mandarin) and Hong Kong cinema (Amoy, Cantonese and Mandarin) also influenced each other. Marketing Hong Kong Films as Taiyu and Mandarin-Dubbed 'Guopian' to Taiwan In her study on the Sinophone, Shih Shu-mei opens with an observation on taiyupian and Cantonese cinema: 'Earlier Taiwanese-language cinema was very much a ghetto unto itself, and Cantonese-language cinema from Hong Kong Film Circulation and Mutual Influences 233 was routinely dubbed in Mandarin when exported to other Chinese-speaking communities' (Shih 2007, 2). In the case of Taiwan, Wang Chun-chi adds that: A large number of Cantonese films dubbed in Mandarin and Taiyu were imported into Taiwan in the mid-1960s. This was especially true when the quota for importing foreign films was reduced during that time. Hong Kong films, being treated as 'national films (guopian)', enjoyed a bigger market share under the KMT cultural policy. (Wang 2015, 138) Today, 'guopian' (national film) is synonymous with 'guochan pian', or nationally produced film (Ministry of Culture 2021), and 'Guoyu pian', or Mandarinlanguage film (literally, 'national-language film'). However, according to a former Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) staff member and editor of its publication Funscreen, Hsieh Chia-chin, 2 Hong Kong Amoy-language films were also dubbed in both Taiyu and Mandarin and were marketed in Taiwan as 'guopian' from the 1940s to the 1960s. 3 The following excerpt, from an article from 1953, written under the pseudonym 'Lord Arts', points out this phenomenon: After the victory over Japan, Chiu Shu-san returned to China and restructured the Grandview Film Company. Apart from making Cantonese films, it was devoted to making colour films. Also, it transported films such as Yiguo qing yuan [sic; it should be Hai jiao qing yuan (Eternal Love, 1947)] back to China and dubbed a Mandarin version to produce colour films with Mandarin dubs. These films were screened in places such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Grandview Film Company, moreover, made Cantonese colour films like Madame Butterfly [1948)] and Huoshao tong huan chuan [sic; it should be Huoshao lianhuan chuan (The Burning of Chained Barges, 1951)]. They were also dubbed in Mandarin and distributed in Taiwan. ('Lord Arts' 1953) Who it was that dubbed these Hong Kong films into Taiyu and Mandarin remains a mystery. However, marketing Hong Kong Amoy-language, Cantonese or Mandarin films dubbed into Taiyu or Mandarin films in Taiwan as 'guopian' in martial-law Taiwan was the Kuomintang (KMT) government's propaganda strategy to counter the People's Republic of China (PRC) by using colonial Hong Kong as its anti-communist ally in the 'Free World'. Although the KMT promoted Mandarin as the 'guoyu' (national language) as early as 1946 by banning Japanese, it did not strictly forbid the use of Taiyu and Hakka in the private sector (Hong 2011, 63). Furthermore, the British colonial government in Hong Kong preferred staying politically neutral to maximise the benefits reaped from its geopolitical ties with other countries (Ng 2021, 119).

Introduction: Bondmania during the Cold War During the Cold War (1946-90), the world was divided ... more Introduction: Bondmania during the Cold War During the Cold War (1946-90), the world was divided in two, represented by the superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States. Espionage became a major task for many nations (Lisanti and Paul 2002: 8). Ian Fleming (1908-1964), the British writer best known for his series of James Bond spy novels, joined the British Naval Intelligence in 1939. After the war, he published fourteen novels on the adventures of British secret agent James Bond in thirteen years between 1953 and his death in 1964 (Lisanti and Paul 2002: 11). Fleming revealed that James Bond was based on hard-boiled detectives of American crime fiction (Chapman 2007: 24). In the first seven novels, from Casino Royale (1953) to Goldfinger (1959), the real-life Soviet assassination bureau SMERSH (Soviet Assassination Division of the KGB, the Soviet Union Committee of State Security) were the villains (Lisanti and Paul 2002: 12). This

Asian Cinema's Answer to the James Bond Craze The production of Hong Kong James Bond spoofs or Bo... more Asian Cinema's Answer to the James Bond Craze The production of Hong Kong James Bond spoofs or Bondpian is often attributed to the Bond craze that started after the screening of Dr. No (Young 1962) in Hong Kong on May 9, 1963 (Lee 2017, 350). According to the film critic Sam Ho, "In the 1960s, after the box office success of the Hollywood James Bond films Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (Young 1963) and Goldfinger (Hamilton 1964), spy films became a global phenomenon. Imitations sprang up all over the so-called free world, the parts of the world huddled under the anti-communist banner (2009, 221; Ho's original)." Critics have examined cosmopolitanism (Tan 2015, 195), representations of women killers (Desser 2017, 117-23), gender performativity and gender traits (Yau 1997), and categorization of these 1960s Hong Kong Bondpin or "Bond films" as crime thrillers (Van den Troost 2014, 64-66) and as "spy films without spies" (Ho 2009, 223; Ho's original). This chapter focuses on the cultural legacy of James Bond spoofs in their comedy remakes in the 1990s. Juxtaposing two trilogies featuring the archetypal Cantonese Jane Bond character, Black Rose in Chor Yuen's Black Rose Trilogy (1965-1967) and Jeff Lau's La Rose Noire Trilogy (1992-1997), it argues that nostalgia and humor are key to understanding the cultural memory of Hongkongers in popular culture. This is especially true as the British colonial rule was approaching its end on July 1, 1997.

This article examines the ways literary adaptations between Hong Kong and Taiwanese writers shape... more This article examines the ways literary adaptations between Hong Kong and Taiwanese writers shape literary cultures in both places during the Cold War period. The 1950s and 1960s were the time when Hong Kong and Taiwan literary cultures were starting to thrive. An influx of literati into both places collaborated with each other and the locals to experiment with literary forms in literary magazines. The 1950s and 1960s were also the time when Hong Kong and Taiwan cinema experienced the first waves of adapting literary works into film in the postwar period. After the literary magazine culture dwindled in the 1970s, a new generation of writers in both places emerged. In Hong Kong, these new writers may not be native, but they take Hong Kong as their main subject in their writings. The Taiwanese writer Shih Shu-ching is one of them. In studying Hong Kong-Taiwan literary adaptation histories, one may easily overlook the adaptation from fiction to screenplay, as in Shih and the Taiwanese playwright Wang Chi-mei's case. By understanding the literary relationship between Hong Kong and Taiwan in the Cold War, together with their adaptation histories, we can acquire a clearer sense of how these literary cultures developed.

Archiv orientální, 2022

The Japanese screwball comedy master Segawa Masaharu 瀬川昌治 comments on the nature of comedy by us... more The Japanese screwball comedy master Segawa Masaharu 瀬川昌治 comments on the nature of comedy by using his collaborator Frankie Sakai's フランキー堺 performance in the Journey (Ryokō 旅行) series (1968-1972) as an example: "There's always a victim in the dreams [of Sakai … in the series]. It's funny because there's a victim." 1 The most famous Korean comic actor of his generation, Koo Bong-seo 구봉서, would concur with Segawa's view as Koo thinks the best comedies are those "blended with tears" because "[if the audience] only laugh, then after the film is over, nothing remains." 2 The Taiwanese comedy director Kevin Chu 朱延平, recently honored with the Outstanding Contribution Award at the 24th Taipei Film Festival, similarly states that the best comedies are tragicomedies that "touch one's heart, warm one's soul and remain in one's memory for a long time." 3 As a mentee of the romantic-comedy filmmaker Zhu Shilin 朱石麟, the Chinese comedy screenwriter-director Sang Hu 桑弧, known for his satirical comedy Long Live the Teacher! (Jiaoshi wansui 教師萬歲, 1944) and his collaborations with the romance writer Eileen Chang 張愛玲, also stresses the importance of "bitterness" in a good comedy. 4 Michael Hui 許冠文, the winner of the 70th Hong Kong Film Award for Lifetime Achievement, expressed a similar opinion in a recent interview when he explained why he found Woody Allen's films less attractive nowadays: when we watched Woody Allen's films in the past, we thought that the world he depicted was absurd, but it still made us laugh at ease while discerning that 1

Archiv orientální, 2022

I attend to the trope of Humble Wage Earners (daa gung zai 打工仔) in the Hui brothers’ comedies and... more I attend to the trope of Humble Wage Earners (daa gung zai 打工仔) in the Hui brothers’ comedies and their remake Fantasia (Gwai maa kong soeng kuk 鬼馬狂想曲, 2004) and argue that they preserve a cultural memory of Hong Kong during transitional periods. The trope and its everyman heroism are keys to decoding the social critique in the remake, which can be seen as an archive constructed through pastiche of canonical elements from the originals. The article first contextualizes the Hui brothers’ comedies in the postwar East Asian comedy film and media tradition (1950s–1970s) and considers them as Hong Kong salaryman comedies, which epitomize the trait of everyman heroism as a core element of Hongkonger’s identity. I demonstrate this point through a reading of Fantasia by focusing on how memory is represented and how the trope is remade. The close reading examines the film’s pastiche of the classic elements, influences, and anecdotes of the Hui brothers’ comedies, hence illustrating a remake’s capacity to archive cultural memory, rewrite cultural history, and reexamine identity in a new light.

Archiv orientální, 2022

Michael Hui received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards and the Aw... more Michael Hui received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 40th Hong Kong Film
Awards and the Award for Outstanding Contribution in Arts at the 15th Hong Kong Arts
Development Awards. Hui was also featured as the “Filmmaker in Focus” at the 44th
Hong Kong International Film Festival. Although the South China Morning Post (2022),
Art and Piece (2022), Michael Hui, Filmmaker in Focus (2020), Karen Fang (2018), and Tim
Youngs (2011) have also published interviews with Hui, they were more interested in
the biographical and the industrial aspects of Hui’s career. This interview focuses on
Hui’s insights into comedy’s versatility and how it consoles people in a time of gloom.

Thinking with Tsai Ming-Liang: 13 Faces of Contemporary Chinese Cinema Studies. Ed. Song-yong Sing and Hsuan-chun Tseng. Trans. Wen-cheng Tsai. 437–52. Taipei: National Chiao Tung University Press, 2021

We generally believe that literature first circulates nationally and then scales up through trans... more We generally believe that literature first circulates nationally and then scales up through translation and reception at an international level. In contrast, I argue that Taiwan literature first attained international acclaim through intermedial translation during the New Cinema period and was only then subsequently recognized nationally. These intermedial translations included not only adaptations of literature for film, but also collaborations between authors who acted as screenwriters and filmmakers. The films resulting from these collaborations repositioned Taiwan as a multilingual, multicultural and democratic nation. These shifts in media facilitated the circulation of these new narratives. Filmmakers could circumvent censorship at home and reach international audiences at Western film festivals. The international success ensured the wide circulation of these narratives in Taiwan.