Jianghu noir : the temporal and spatial becoming of the multitude in the cinema of Hong Kong

Abstract

Jianghu noir is a genre that marks the trajectory of the development of Hong Kong crime and gangster films, which reveals the maturation of the multitude that transitions from an obsession with time to an obsession with space. Literally “river and lake,” “jianghu” originally refers to the martial art universe of martial art heroes and heroines in ancient imperial China of a mostly unspecified past. It reincarnates as the contemporary Hong Kong cinematic criminal underworld that comprises the multitude living on the margins: triads, criminals, juvenile delinquents, prostitutes, and rogue cops. Jianghu prefigures, describes, and prescribes “the multitude” that challenges “the people” - the unquestioned hegemonic understanding of a collective that silences alternative imaginations. “Noir” originally refers to the post-war American detective and crime films that share a strong urban sensibility. It finds its full expression in the extreme verticality and volumetricity of Hong Kong’s cinematic cityscape, which is constructed in a foam-like structure. Such “foam” offers ontological, psychological, and architectural dimensions that the socio-political “multitude” lacks. At the inception of jianghu noir as such a “multitude-in-foam,” jianghu heroes and heroines exhibit characteristics of the combustible multitude in their “heroic bloodshed” that puts Hong Kong on the cinematic world map. John Woo (吳宇森)’s A Better Tomorrow and Wong Kar-wai (王家衛)’s As Tears Go By are such paradigm cases. The multitude battles the ravages of hyper-anticipatory time whereas the cityscape’s noir-ness exists but remains subdued. As Hong Kong’s extreme verticality and volumetricity intensify, jianghu noir gradually transitions from an obsession with time to an obsession with space. Hong Kong’s noir cityscape then jumps to the fore as a character in itself. The cityscape-enabled surveillance and sousveillance in the noir are best captured in films by Johnnie To Kei-fung (杜琪峯), Felix Chong Man-keung (莊文強) and Alan Mak Siu-fai (麥兆輝), and Philip Yung Tsz-kwong (翁子光). Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster also marks a significant noir departure from his previous obsession with time. Jianghu noir is thus a process in which the initially volatile jianghu multitude has saved itself from anarchistic self-destruction by learning to live as “foam” – a stable structure achieved by the multitude isolating themselves from each other and being dependent on each other. Jianghu noir is thus “the multitude in foam,” which is a viable mode of existence for the explosive multitude, contained in extreme urban spatial compression.