Category III Films in Post-Handover Hong Kong: Excessive Violence and Its Containment in Weiduoliya yi hao and Chuji

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article examines the aesthetics of violence in two Category III–rated films: Weiduoliya yi hao (Dream Home, Pang Ho-cheung, 2010) and Chuji (Sara, Herman Yau, 2015). The author argues that Category III aesthetics, which balance excessive violence and its containment through strategies of genre-blending, analepsis, and narrative references to Hong Kong history, expose the intersection between official discourse and gendered subjects striving for upward mobility. Reading the protagonists in each film as victims and perpetrators of violence within Hong Kong’s neoliberal and subimperial economy allows the author to rehabilitate the cultural function of Category III films in post-handover Hong Kong.