Using analytical tools provided by Stuart Hall in Representations and/or Dai Jinhua’s idea about Orientalism and Occidentalism, give examples of how concepts of East, West, or the absence of or merging of such identifications are expressed in Chungking Express.

When viewing Chungking Express, it’s important to consider Hong Kong as a character in itself, though

the question would be then of what representation? The characters in this film seem to have no pasts,

their lives marked by seemingly random and arbitrary encounters – how then do we start talking about

Orientalist/Occidental representations with such diffusions of identity? Indeed, if we look at Hong Kong

as characterized by Asian affiliations at home and Western in its consumption culture, juxtaposed

against its immigrants-based and background as a cultural melting pot, there appears a suspension of

identities – when the choice is of two polarities – East or West. In the broadest sense, there is thus an

absence of Eastern/Western identity.

But it’s also possible to view the characterization of Hong Kong as a merging of these disparate identities

as well. In the words of Wong himself, the 2 main spaces of shooting in the movie served as

"microcosms of Hong Kong" – crowded, urban, at the palimpsestic intersection of the global and the

local. The movie shares an Orientalist stereotype of South Asians, most exemplified in its treatment of

Indians and the Pilipino seductress. In adopting this colonial gaze through unstable camera movements

and moments punctuated by disruptions to our conventional habits of experiencing cinema time, Wong

appears to be mediating the Hong Kong anxiety about the 1997 handover. As a country that experiences

British colonialism, US cultural hegemony and a then soon-handover to Chinese “authoritarian” rule,

Hong Kong appears to succumb to Orientalist persuasions to establish its own cultural identity (99%

Chinese) vis-à-vis a one-dimensional representation of other Asian ethnicities. This is one way the movie

establishes a uniquely Hong Kong identity by stereotyping what it is not in contrast to other Asians. And

another way the movie identities as non-Western was established by the different attitudes towards

love and sex in its male characters – the manipulative Western drug dealer and the two Chinese cops.

While the latter two appears very vulnerable and lovesick, the former was seen to be involved in two-

timing and subsequently suffers a violent death; while Wong’s film noir treatment and lack of emotional

distance with the Western male results in a certain nonchalance about the murder being committed.

The more pressing concern I was made to feel is one of, what happens when the cop and the “blonde”

meet? How would their encounter be liked? What would happen?

When we draw parallels between such questions on the viewers’ minds and the May 1st expiry date that

appeared in various forms of canned food, we are reminded of the arbitrary nature of Hong Kong’s 1997

handover, the “murder” or end of its British affiliations as a result (symbolized by the death of the

Western male) and questions of who are we really and what’s going to happen next arises naturally in

the context of a Hong Kong identity coming to grips with itself.

It is possible to say Hong Kong is postculture in that state of suspension and meeting together of

different cultures, as marked in the film by instabilities and paradoxes of time. The things most distinctly

Chinese in the movie appears to be some of the food items consumed, and the outward appearance of

the actors and actresses involved. In this regard I am reminded of my personal encounters with Korean

popular culture – manufactured with Western MTV tools and sounds composed by European

songwriters (to take SNSD as an example) – the only things distinctly Korean about such cultural

products appeared to be the ethnicities of the singers and the language in which the songs were sang in.

Seen against a backdrop of increasing globalization and continual exchange between different cultures,

that there continues to be a missing Oriental culture in and of itself, seen as an ongoing discourse

among the various narratives that are native to its heritage and history, appears to point at a very real

danger of cultural homogenization which would essentially render Orientalist and Occidental

perspectives obsolete. As goods become a medium through which loss and alienation are affected and

negotiated as people go about living their lives in the city, the compactness and density of urban

dwellings exist in stark contrast to the inability of its citizens to communicate in-person (Faye reveals her

true feelings about Tony on her secret visits into his apartment). The implication is that when that

genuine connection is made impossible, people commoditise love as yet another item of consumption,

talk to inanimate objects and live inside their own heads – consequently, identification is made

impossible because one cannot have a reciprocal relationship with goods. Thankfully, the movie offers a

beacon of hope when the first cop made the gesture of cleaning the blonde’s heels, and the blonde sent

him a birthday wish the next day. There is a sense in which a shared space and thoughtful moments

breakdown the alienation experienced in a state of cultural suspension. If we employ the metaphor of

Cop 223 as a representation of Hong Kong and the blonde as a representation of China (the Western

male as the colonial master), there is hope of reconciliation and of a new chapter being written. Towards

the end of the first segment, though 223 continues to employ the language of cans and expiry dates, it is

finally one unqualified by deadlines.

When we turn our attention to the second segment, Faye’s persistent fondness of “California Dreaming”

can be seen as an overt display of an Occidental preference for the West. In fact she even “left” cop 663

who was supposed to be her object of desire for the real California only to return 1 year later with the

realization that it wasn’t much. I consider this awakening and reencounter the movie’s way of opening

up the possibility of a new sort of cultural encounter – no longer marked by simplified polarities and

mass-consumption culture, but mediated by spatial and temporal relations in conjunction with a shared

memory. In essence, with its embrace of MTV techniques and Western cultural goods, the movie itself

makes a statement that transcends the crudest perceptions of Eastern and/or Western culture. In this

new sort of encounter, connections made possible by sheer chance and/or geographic proximity (0.01

cm) matter more than typified associations with a stereotyped cultural identity.