Nostalgic Humour and Cultural Memory in the Remakes of Hong Kong Jane Bond Films

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Public lecture/ talk

After the screening of Dr No (1962, Terence Young) in Hong Kong on 9th May, 1963, the Bond craze hit Hong Kong cinema and subsequently led to a surge of a range of films featuring a Bond lead in both Mandarin and Cantonese cinemas. Critics generally focus on stardom, cosmopolitanism, and the nuxia (female martial heroines) and Jane Bond trend in the 1960s as the starting point of Hong Kong cinema’s representations of women killers. 

Abstract

This talk focuses on the popular culture references in the Bond Cantonese comedy remakes in the 1990s, and argues that nostalgia and humour are key to understanding the cultural memory of Hongkongers in popular culture as the British colonial rule came to an end in 1997. By examining Bond Cantonese comedy remakes like 92 Legendary La Rose Noire 92黑玫瑰對黑玫瑰 (1992, Jeff Lau), Rose Rose I Love You 玫瑰玫瑰我愛你 (1993,  Jacky Pang), and Black Rose II 黑玫瑰義結金蘭 (1997, Jeff Lau and Corey Yuen), this paper further contends that the 1960s’ Hong Kong Bond films were a hybrid response to the 1960s’ James Bond films, the 1940s’ Shanghai espionage films, and a new generation of local directors, stars, and spectators, therefore rejecting the simplifying labels of globalism and cosmopolitanism often attributed to them.

Biography

Dr Jessica Siu-yin Yeung is Research Assistant Professor at the Centre for Film and Creative Industries of Lingnan University. Her essays have appeared in Cultural History, Archiv orientální, Journal of World Literature, Humans at Work in the Digital Age (Routledge), Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong (Palgrave Macmillan), a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and Virginia Woolf Miscellany. She co-edited a special issue on Comedies in East Asian Media of Archiv orientální and is co-editing another special issue on Women and Chineseness in Cinema and Media: Traditions and Trends at the Journal of Chinese Cinemas.

She is working on a few essays on Hong Kong and Taiwan literature and cinema during the Cold War and a book on semiotics, queerness and allegory in Taiwan and Hong Kong novels and cinema.

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The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Tuesday 21 November to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

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