DOwnlOad.™ Translocal Readings: Hong Kong Television Serials in Us Chinatowns Ebook. by Amy Lee

Translocal Readings: Hong Kong Television Serials in Us Chinatowns

This dissertation, "Translocal Readings: Hong Kong Television Serials in US Chinatowns" by Amy, Lee, 李凱華, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "Translocal Readings: Hong Kong Television Serials in US Chinatowns" Submitted by Amy Lee for the degree of Master of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in October 2006 The transnational distribution of Hong Kong TV drama serials produced by Television Broadcast, Inc (TVB), a premier media outlet in Hong Kong that boasts of itself as the largest Chinese programmer in the world and the simultaneous migration of Hong Kong people to the US post-1965 have forged an ongoing relationship between Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities in the US. In the US, Hong Kong TV addresses a very specific audience, that of Asian immigrants vis a vis Chinatown markets. This thesis is interested in the ways in which Hong Kong television representations articulate the shifting "movements of labor and capital" (Grewal and Kaplan, 1994) that are transforming both the cultural geographies of Hong Kong and Chinatown. Rather than focusing on direct representations of Asian Americans, this thesis argues that there needs to be a way to study representations "outside of context." There may be particular representations that have resonance in Asian America but which have not been fully articulated in its original context. Through allegorical readings, this thesis looks at the ways in which Asian American concerns are figured into the Hong Kong televisual text. As a hegemonic producer of Chineseness, these narratives help to shape cultural, racial and national identities in Chinatown. Chapter One provides the theoretical framework for this research project, arguing for the need to understand the transpacific linkages that constitute Asian America. Hong Kong and Chinatown are taken as the paradigmatic translocal sites marking this transpacific trajectory. Chapter Two looks at the transnational circulation of Hong Kong TV dramas as mediating the transpacific, Hong Kong- Chinatown imaginary. The last two chapters are analyses of two specific kinds of Hong Kong television genres: the family melodrama and the travel (or diasporic) narrative. Chapter Three reads the rise and fall of family-run corporate empires on Hong Kong TV melodramas, such as Looking Back in Anger (義不容情) and Greed of Man (大時代), as allegories of the racial, class and gender inequalities central to Hong Kong and Chinatown experiences of modernity. Using the example of The Last Breakthrough (天涯 俠醫 ), Chapter Four argues that travel narratives foreground Hong Kong's experiences of globalization as a space where differences are easily smoothed over and any encounters with "others" are made possible through the adoption of Western liberal values. However, travel is not always valorized on Hong Kong TV. Through a close analysis of Split Second (爭分奪秒), the chapter argues that the serial is indicative of Hong Kong's often vexed struggle to grapple with its relationship with the rest of the world. Instead of the possibilities and hope portrayed in the The Last Breakthrough, Split Second is marred by the dangers, anxieties and uncertainties involved in transnational affiliations, especially Chinese diasporic affiliations, as they intersect with the transnational circulation of capital. These serials point to the impossibilities of subjecthood that attend today's global changes. Travel narratives are ultimately concerned with the production of new Chinese diasporic i