Tracing the Science Fiction Genre in Hong Kong Cinema

Abstract

This chapter traces the sporadic historical development of the science fiction genre in Hong Kong cinema and analyses several films made in Hong Kong since 1979, which adopt science fiction elements to negotiate cultural and ideological anxieties related to modernity, coloniality and Chinese nationalism. The films analysed in this chapter blend science fiction motifs, iconography and narratives with other local genres such as wuxia, kung fu, comedy and the undercover cop/agent thriller. This mixing of genres foregrounds Hong Kong cinema’s particular ideological perspective, which sometimes undermines, challenges or embraces the conventions of the science fiction genre. In this experimental stage from the late-1970s to the 1980s, Hong Kong science fiction films reveal the locus of Hong Kong cinema as one that shuttles between the local, national and global, both resisting and welcoming the modernity that the imagination of science fiction offers. This negotiation is a reaction to Hong Kong’s position in-between Chinese nationalism and British colonialism.