Haunting Power: Ghost Busting and Spectral Resistance in Colonial and National Cantonese Cinema

This article examines ghost representations in early Cantonese cinema, revealing a paradox in which films both reject irrational beliefs and rely on otherworldly allure to engage audiences. 1930s Cantonese ghost films balanced popular supernatural fascination with patriotic nationalism under colonial censorship, using allegorical narratives to critique superstition, express covert resistance, and provide escapism amid political tensions and cultural identity conflicts. Focusing on The Ghost Catcher (1939) amid British colonialism, Chinese nationalism, and popular superstition, it analyzes censorship in Republican China and Hong Kong to show how the film created allegorical spaces negotiating spectral repression and resistance within overlapping colonial policies and Chinese discourses. While progressive reviews praised the film’s patriotic, anti-Japanese narrative, they overlooked its eroticism and lavish visuals inspired by Hollywood spectacles. The article argues that Cantonese ghost cinema functioned as a flexible medium articulating social anxieties, cultural conflicts, and tacit alignments with both Chinese anti-superstition campaigns and colonial ideologies promoting science and modernity. This paradox highlights censorship’s core contradiction: as the state suppresses supernatural belief to enforce ideological control, popular cinema revives ghosts as symbols of what resists erasure—embodying repression, resistance, and enduring public fascination.

The study also explores post-war Hong Kong’s efforts to sanitize spectral presence on screen through the rise of “non-ghost (ghost) stories.” These films embraced a materialist ethos, typically concluding with rational explanations that dismissed ghosts’ reality. Paradoxically, they reintroduced ghostly presence through suspense and haunting, embracing colonial modernity while critiquing Chinese superstition and tradition.