Representations of Blackness in Hong Kong Media

Dr Tesfaye, Facil   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Chow Shun Man Emily   (Co-Investigator)

24

2019-01-01

2020-12-31

93200

Representations of Blackness in Hong Kong Media

Africa China relations, Africans in China, Blackness, Media, Popular Culture, Representation

Area Studies (including Japanese Studies, China Studies, European Studies)Film, Visual and Media Studies

201811159262

Seed Fund for PI Research – Basic Research

2018

Completed

This research focuses on the representations of Africans and African cultures in Hong Kong media, the reasons behind such representations, and the political, social, as well as cultural significance. Since the introduction of the ""One Belt One Road"" initiative, the ties between China and Africa is getting stronger. The financial involvement of the Chinese government in Africa is prominent. China has just pledged another sixty billion US dollar loans to Africa in September 2018. That being said, the ties between the two places could be dated back to the Tang dynasty when there were not only financial but also cultural exchanges among their peoples. Nonetheless, the continent was and is still very much defined in the Chinese consciousness stereotypically. It is fair to say that the reception of Africa in Hong Kong was heavily influenced by that of China. Significantly, being a former colonial yet highly internationalized city, the narratives of the continent in Hong Kong are becoming more interesting and diverse in recent decades. Being one of the major gate ways of the world to China, the representations of Africa in Hong Kong therefore has the potential of altering and illuminating on the changing Africa-China relationship. In fact, it is hard to not notice the increasing presence of Africa and Africans in various Hong Kong media. These representations of Africa define and change the ways the local people perceive and understand the people and the cultures of the continent. In other words, those representations construct a unique image of ""African-ness"" in the city. Although studies have been conducted research to study Africans presences in Hong Kong, most of them either take historical or anthropological approaches. No extensive research has been conducted so far to examine the significance of how African-ness is being understood and presented in Hong Kong media since the majority of the texts this project focuses on are in Chinese. As such, this project reveals what is invisible to non-local people and gives you a glimpse in the local state of mind by examining how Africans are being represented in various texts that vehicle and condition African presence in the city. To understand how Africans are portrayed in media, this project examines popular entertainment industry, literary writing, advertisement, and other forms of media to investigates in what ways these media reinforce or redefine what it means to be an African in the city. By analyzing texts dated from the 60’s up till the twenty-first century, the research interrogates the roles played by political, social, cultural, and economical discourses in weaving imaginations and narratives of the continent. Upon collecting sources from media in Hong Kong that covers Africa, African peoples, or African cultures, they will be put into major categories of movies, documentaries, television series, variety shows, Cantonese pop songs, creative writing (fiction, poetry, and drama), newspaper articles, advertisement (commercial and charities), and cultural and art festivals. What the project aims to do include: (i) to investigate the historical involvement and place of Black people in Hong Kong and its significance; (ii) to interrogate some of the ways the Black people are imagined and (re)represented in the city; (iii) to discuss critical issues and debates that have shaped the way in which blackness is conceptualized; (iv) to converse with current it is hoped that students will further develop interest and sensitivity to (re)representations of African(ness) in today’s Asia; (v) to raise awareness towards the complexity and diversity of the concept of blackness; (vi) to identify and discuss some of the significant features of imagination and representation of blackness in Hong Kong; (vii) to examine representation of blackness in Hong Kong while being sensitive to cultural, social, political, and historical factors; and (viii) to offer informed comment on some of the key issues confronting construction and representation of blackness in Hong Kong. As mentioned, academic research on the presence of Africans in Hong Kong is not a tabula rasa and the majority of the projects foreground historical and anthropological significance of the lives of Africans in the city rather than the images crafted by Hong Kong media. For example, the research of Helen Siu, Frank Dikötter, and Shih Shi-Mei unveil the historical and social momentum that charge the relationship between China and the African continent. They thus situate the project in light of similar mechanisms shared by Hong Kong. However, considering the entangled colonial history of Hong Kong (1989 – 1997) and hence the great deal of colonial and postcolonial political and social complexity, the project also seeks to study at the presence of Africans in Hong Kong in its own right. Scholarship focuses on the history of Africans in Hong Kong is limited but Gordon Mathews have conducted extensive anthropological and cultural research on the lives of Africans staying in or living in the city. In Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong (2011), Mathews observes that Hong Kong people project a tremendous sense of otherness onto Chungking Mansions as well as people associated with it because of the unwillingness to share governmental welfare with them. Undoubtedly, Mathews’s account colours the understanding of the cultural landscape of African presence in Hong Kong. In fact, all of the literatures mentioned would be of paramount importance in contextualizing this research. Nevertheless, it is very important to stress that fact that what they focus on are how the lives of the African people then and now. The proposed project, instead, stresses the necessity to recognise the significance of understanding the forces that condition their presences in the city. The main objectives the proposed project therefore lies in examining and understanding how African presences are being represented in local media in an attempt to investigate what images are created and neglected in presenting the African continent in local media. Most importantly, it also examines what give rise to how such representations and how they alter relationships between China, Africa, and Hong Kong.