J. de Kloet

Flânerie and acrophilia in the postmetropolis: rooftops in hong Kong cinema

ABSTRACT Living in the spectacle of Hong Kongs skyscape, how often do its dwellers actually see, not to mention reach, its rooftops? Intriguingly, despite their apparent ephemerality and inaccessibility, the vertical fringes of the city feature frequently in Hong Kong cinema: the rooftop. In this article, we connect the cinematic trope of the rooftop to the anxiety of living in a postmetropolitan city like Hong Kong. We do so by walking with Georg Simmels blasé attitude and Benjamins flânerie in the metropolitan city, to meet Christoph Lindners more (self-)destructive blasé individual trying to grapple with his postmetropolitan anxiety. Finally, we posit to understand the deployment of rooftops in Hong Kong cinema — in the crime thriller Infernal Affairs, the coming-of-age drama High Noon and the psychological horror Inner Senses — as a way out, literally and figuratively, a space where one negotiates and perhaps overcomes a blasé postmetropolitan individuality with moments of radical reconnection.

Created in China and Pak Sheung Chuen's tactics of the mundane

Drawing on the writings of Rey Chow, I aim in this article to show, first, how the performance of ethnic difference is played out in the Chinese artistic field, and, second, how the Chinese nation-state skilfully accommodates critical voices to buttress its global position. Chineseness has become a unique selling point, an ethnic trading card that lubricates the financial and ideological flows between the global art world, the Beijing cultural scene and the Chinese nation-state. The art district 798 serves as a key example for the recent emergence of creative industries in which ethnic difference plays an important productive force. In the third part of this article, I will show how Hong Kong complicates this picture, given that any claim by Hong Kong artists to ethnic difference is bound to be incomplete and impure. The work of Pak Sheung Chuen (Tozer Pak) constitutes a powerful critique on and explores artistic lines of flight out of the issue of Chineseness and its intricate links with an enchanted mode of global capitalism. It does so not by developing an artistic critique, which would after all be constitutive of capitalism itself, but by engaging in what I like to term a tactics of the banal and the mundane that are firmly located in the here and now. These tactics constitute, similar to Rey Chows writing, a micropolitics that may help to move away from the overcoded language of ethnicity and Chineseness.Drawing on the writings of Rey Chow, I aim in this article to show, first, how the performance of ethnic difference is played out in the Chinese artistic field, and, second, how the Chinese nation-state skilfully accommodates critical voices to buttress its global position. Chineseness has become a unique selling point, an ethnic trading card that lubricates the financial and ideological flows between the global art world, the Beijing cultural scene and the Chinese nation-state. The art district 798 serves as a key example for the recent emergence of creative industries in which ethnic difference plays an important productive force. In the third part of this article, I will show how Hong Kong complicates this picture, given that any claim by Hong Kong artists to ethnic difference is bound to be incomplete and impure. The work of Pak Sheung Chuen (Tozer Pak) constitutes a powerful critique on and explores artistic lines of flight out of the issue of Chineseness and its intricate links with an enchanted mode of global capitalism. It does so not by developing an artistic critique, which would after all be constitutive of capitalism itself, but by engaging in what I like to term a tactics of the banal and the mundane that are firmly located in the here and now. These tactics constitute, similar to Rey Chows writing, a micropolitics that may help to move away from the overcoded language of ethnicity and Chineseness.

All that has melted into bits and bytes becomes solid

Abstract Utopian and dystopian narratives often abound in analyses of current processes of convergence and digitization of cinema. We argue that such analyses run the danger of amplifying the ruptures and discontinuities while ignoring continuities. In particular, the material, tangible and sociable dimension of film production and consumption ought to be included in (Chinese) cinema studies.

Introduction: Global Cultures of Contestation

From the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East in early 2011, via the Spanish indignados and Occupy Wall Street to the Umbrella movement in Hong Kong, recent years have seen major instances of popular contestation across the world. Moving beyond positions that present a singularly celebratory or dismissive account of this global protest “wave,” we advocate approaching each protest in terms of both its specificity and its tendency, in a context of advanced globalization and digitization, to connect to, learn from, or influence protests elsewhere. Outlining the volume’s focus on mobility, sustainability, aesthetics, and connectivity in this chapter, we ask: (1) How do the protests use mobility and immobility as part of their action repertoires and what forms of mobility are implied in the spread of protest waves? (2) How are issues of sustainability addressed in the various protests, and to what extent are the protests themselves sustainable? (3) What are the aesthetics of contemporary protest movements? (4) How do connective platforms facilitate today’s protests and shape their focus and dynamics?

[Review of: M. Keane (2007) Created in China: the great new leap forward]

Since the turn of the century, the creative industries in China have steadily gained importance. In cities all over China, creative clusters have emerged, areas where media industries (e.g. television, advertising, publishers, and digital game developers), artists and designers gather. In 2006, the creative industries received the green light from the national government. The emergence and popularity of art districts such as 798 in Beijing and Shanghai’s “creative art park” are just two examples. Given the ubiquitous presence of ideas linked to creativity and innovation in popular, political, and academic discourse in China, epitomized by the rhetoric of an upcoming renaissance of Chinese culture, Michael Keane’s book on the creative economy of China comes at a timely moment. The book is structured in two parts; the first part presents a historical overview on cultural developments in China starting from 2000 B.C., based on secondary sources,whereas the second part tracks the recent emergence of the creative industry discourse and practices, based on research by the author. For readers who are well informed about China’s cultural history, the second part is clearly of greater value. In the first part, taking a dynamic approach to history, Keane sketches a genealogy of the cultural-knowledge economy in China, teasing out both continuities and discontinuities. His historical overview moves smoothly through the centuries, from The Book of Changes to the cultural fever in the 1980s. In the second part, Keane shows how a national innovation agenda entered the five-year plans of the government and was eagerly picked up by city governments in their wish to become more competitive. He rightly observes that such a desire may not yield success as the heavy hand of the government may stifle creativity. Cities are crucial for the emergence of creative economies, and Keane critically observes the role of real estate developers in this process. Moving to production practices, Keane shows how successful reality-TV formats such as “Supergirl” come from creative coproductions that have brokered greater awareness of the importance of sharing resources and revenues. Cultural branding (involving e.g. the Great Wall and the Shaolin Temple) is one tactic Keane explores through which the cultural industry can attract more national and international audiences. In conclusion, Keanewarns that China’s official policy to move from “Made in China” to “Created in China” still requires more institutional reform, more openness, and more transparency (p. 164). C hina Inform aion X X I(2)

[Review of: Z. Zhen (2007) The urban generation: Chinese cinema and society at the turn of the twenty-first century]

gentry scholars of important official business; it remained the dominant source of official news and “the mouthpiece of the government” until the 19th century (pp. 16–17). There is, however, some debate over the exact role of the imperial gazette in late imperial China. Yin Yungong argues in Zhongguo Mingdai xinwen chuanbo shi (A history of news transmission in Ming China) (Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1990) that, because these publications might include criticism of the government and because they had a wide circulation, they helped to create a public sphere in the late Ming. Finally, there is no discussion at all here of the development of the Chinese press and government censorship in the Republican era or under the early People’s Republic, where one might find more precise and more pressing reasons for the contemporary limits on press freedom. In sum, while it is plausible that the late 19th-century missionary press in China helped in some way to shape the current configuration of the Chinese press, it was certainly only one among many other influences and factors. A reasonable assessment of the role of the missionary press would require a more detailed and wider ranging historical study than is offered here. The Origins of theModern Chinese Pressworks best as a general introduction to the development of the Protestant missionary press in 19th-century China. Summarizing secondary sources, Zhang surveys a greatmany topics here—the nature of the traditional order and theChinese scholar-official elite (pp. 19–29), the course of intellectual change in the Qing (pp. 117–23), the missionaries’ impact on Chinese printing technology (ch. 6), the development of a “scholars’ public sphere” (pp. 96–100), and so forth. Although the relevance of these topics to her basic question about press freedom is often unclear, her overview nonetheless provides the nonspecialist readerwith awide-ranging introduction to some of the major issues in the study of the late Qing press. CYNTHIA BROKAW, History, Ohio State University, Columbus, USA

Introduction: Cosmopatriots: On Distant Belongings and Close Encounters

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