Huang, Tsung-yi. "Hong Kong Blue: Flaneurie with the Camera's Eye in a Phantasmagoric
Global City." Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 385-402, Fall 2000. Print.
http://lab.geog.ntu.edu.tw/lab/r408/paper/2000HKblue.pdf
Wong's exploration of Hong Kong through his use of cinematography and storytelling in the film is an example of the director-flaneur. The film displays an urban landscape depicting Hong Kong as an increasingly globalized city, a command-post city that is constantly changing.
387-389 -- Wong shows Hong Kong to be "an impressionistic, almost Italian neorealist, telling a story of walkers marooned in the dream evoked by the global city mirage" (p. 389).
390-392 -- Time-space compression is exemplified through the myriad landscapes that the two characters wander through, from fast food shops to lonely streets. These policemen show just how globalization limits the potential of the flaneur and exaggerates their innate lovesickness. In essence, Wong states that globalization offers the flaneur the ability to overcome their problems with traditional society, as he maps Hong Kong with his camera and opens up the flaneur to new possibilities.
392-394 -- Wong defies modernization in Chungking by mapping city of hyper-dense Hong Kong
- walker of Hong Kong streets desires intimacy in anonymous crowd
394-398 -- Wong's guide to 'real' Hong Kong shows dichotomy between urban slums and skyscrapers
- explores spatial configurations of urban morphology through cop 663's travels
through slums
- uses absent global space to show the two sides of Hong Kong (rich and poor)
that are invisible to each other
Works Cited
Huang, Tsung-yi. "Hong Kong Blue: Flaneurie with the Camera's Eye in a Phantasmagoric
Global City." Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 385-402, Fall 2000. Print.
