The Making of Keung To Bay: Fandom, Urban Space and Affective Alliance in Hong Kong

This chapter examines the implications of mass fan activities and mobilizations that have become popular in Hong Kong in recent years. Using the fan event of “Keung To Bay” in Causeway Bay as a case study, it explores the relationship between fandom and the formation of new affective alliances, and how popular culture fans turn “impossible” urban spaces into affective carnivals. The authors suggest that the physical and affective isolations that were imposed on individuals as COVID-control measures and the new mode of political control could be seen as a form of symbolic violence that works to depoliticize urban space by erasing the possibility of collective action in the public sphere. The chapter presents a case of mass mobilization and spatial remaking through popular culture in an urban context where bottom-up collective action is almost impossible. While the authors contend that “fantopia” represents symbolic resistance to the state's dissolution of the public, they argue that the ageist and sexist labeling of Keung To's female fans and the criticism of their overprotective love for the idol reveal how symbolic violence, intergenerational conflicts, and gendered forms of exclusion are materialized in spatial practice.