Rooftop Queering: Scud's Permanent Residence (2009) and Amphetamine (2010) and the Queering of Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper analyzes two works of filmmaker Scud - Permanent Residence (2009) and Amphetamine (2010) – against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s post-1997 urbanized political economy. Scud’s various queer films feature same-sex eroticism within the frame of fraternal kinship between two characters from different “walks of life.” In the case of Permanent Residence, it is an unrequited love story between a Hong Kong local and a Mainlander; Amphetamine chronicles the tumultuous affair of an affluent financial analyst and a drug-dependent working class local. Such stories are cinematically rendered through a combination of techniques: the use of male frontal nudity, intertextual referencing to Hong Kong culture and politics, and a combination of realist, fantastic, and documentary-style filming. The urban landscape, viewed from the rooftop, plays a crucial role in the advancement of Scud’s sexualized cinematic politics. I argue that more than just a setting where significant actions in both films take place, the rooftop physically and metaphorically consolidates Scud’s thematic concerns and cinematic strategies. Rooftops are liminal spaces that are ideal for queering in the Hong Kong context: simultaneously public and private, providing a picturesque view of the city while at the same time eliciting moments of private erotic intimacy. In a similar way, Scud’s films perform the function of what I call “rooftop queering,” providing a unique view into Hong Kong’s bourgeoning economic directions while at the same time locating the ways in which male homosexual politics deconstructs these narratives through an overt eroticized spatial engagement of urban space within the film texts.