A Palimpsest of Hong Kong Futures Across Three Fictions (1962-2046)

Bram Overbeeke*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Hong Kong has been located in the future tense throughout various genres of writing and popular culture, serving as a model for free-market neoliberal thinkers, as a proof-of-concept for future national reunification and as the backdrop for techno-orientalist and cyberpunk narratives. Paradoxically, within recent Hong Kong cultural productions and civil society debates is often a strong sense of a foreclosed future. This paper traces three fictions that together navigate the shifting temporalization of Hong Kong, from Wong Kar Wai's 2046 (2004), which adapts the pulp fiction writer frame narrative from Liu Yichang's The Drunkard (1963). The film's anachronistic 1960s SF unexpectedly finds its way into an emerging genre/movement as seen in the video essay Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD) by Lawrence Lek (2016). These three (science) fiction texts reveal Hong Kong as a palimpsest of temporalities - an impossible fiction of '50 years of no change', which somehow still returns as a site from which to imagine the future.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)325-348
    Number of pages24
    JournalJournal of Chinese Film Studies
    Volume4
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 27 Aug 2024

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • History
    • Visual Arts and Performing Arts
    • Cultural Studies

    User-Defined Keywords

    • adaptation
    • Hong Kong cinema
    • palimpsest
    • science fiction
    • Wong Kar-wai

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