An Auteurist Journey through the Fantastic Mode: A Case Study of Ho Meng-hua

Abstract

This chapter uses Hong Kong commercial filmmaker Ho Meng-hua and his fantastic work to address three main lines of inquiry: the articulations of the fantastic mode across different genres, the kinds of mise-en-scène of desire facilitated by the public forms of generic conventions, and the sorts of preferred subject positions animated by different kinds of mise-en-scène of desire in question. Along with the particular manoeuvre of the fantastic mode across three key genres (fantasy adventure, martial arts and horror genres), coupled with a changing formulation of the fantastic’s double appeal to what the author terms ‘fantastic impossibility’ and ‘spectacular probability’, this chapter comes to the conclusion that Ho Meng-hua’s career at Shaws studio during the 1960s and 1970s reflected the way the Hong Kong people negotiated their distinct subjectivity in a transnational framework, which is the socio-political significance of the fantastic mode in its Hong Kong articulation.