The left-wing legacy in ’70s Hong Kong television: Chameleon (1978) and Lee Sil-hong’s Rediffusion (RTV) tetralogy

AbstractA missing chapter in the history of postwar left-wing Hong Kong cinema involves the channeling of its energies into television in the 1970s. At Rediffusion (RT V), producer Lee Sil-hong – son of director Lee Sun-fung – mobilized veterans from the classical period of the left-wing studios to produce a tetralogy of serialized television dramas that represent the apotheosis of the jiating lunli pian, not only resurrecting the spirit behind such classic Union melodramas as In the Face of Demolition (1953) or their celebrated adaptation of Ba Jin’s “Torrents” trilogy, but doing so with an epic ambition with regard to historical scope and scale that had been inconceivable even in the heyday of left-wing Hong Kong cinema in the 1950s. Providing a panoramic account of twentieth-­century Chinese history, Lee’s tetralogy – Chameleon (1978), Gone with the Wind (1980), Fatherland (1980), and Hong Kong Gentlemen (1981) – predates by at least a decade attempts by China’s Fifth Generation, New Taiwan Cinema, and the Hong Kong New Wave to address such subject matter in comparable fashion through the social epic or family melodrama. Factors that made possible Lee’s achievement include: (i) the central importance of television as a medium for the expression of local cultural identity during the period of Hong Kong’s economic takeoff, (ii) the renewal on television of left-wing filmmaking philosophy and practices inherited from Thirties Shanghai and Fifties Hong Kong, and (iii) the social realist sensibility of the left-wing tradition – along with its strong interest in the transcultural adaptation of foreign literature – that allowed it to frame local experience in terms of the global, benefitting from an awareness of both the 19th-century European novel and the contemporary American television epic. Situating Lee’s tetralogy within the broader historical context of persistent Chinese left-wing efforts across generations to contest politically rival screen practices, this essay analyzes Chameleon for its distinctive worldview and methods characteristic of the jiating lunli pian, while assessing its functional aesthetic as rooted in the literature-inspired realist melodrama with didactic aims – an inherited tradition to which it contributed a magisterial endpoint but beyond which it was unwilling to advance, unlike the groundbreaking modernism of the Hong Kong New Wave’s television work.Keywords: jiating lunli pianUnion Film (Zhonglian)Cantonese melodramatranscultural adaptationAT V (Asia Television Limited)Lee Sun-fungChinese left-wing cinemaleft-wing television Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 As Cheuk (Citation2008) observes, television production in Hong Kong was never more closely associated with the film industry than during this period, and connections between the two mediums should not be overlooked.2 Examples include from China To Live (1994) and The Blue Kite (1993); from Taiwan A City of Sadness (1989) and A Brighter Summer Day (1991); from Hong Kong Song of the Exile (1990).3 The success of Roots was such that the miniseries became a global phenomenon thereafter. The Hollywood production Holocaust (1978), for instance, depicted the rise of Nazism in Germany by following two families – one Christian, the other Jewish – between the years 1938 and 1945. Its controversial reception led German filmmakers to respond with their own epic miniseries and family sagas addressing national history, including Heimat (1984) and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).4 Indeed, Lee Sil-hong’s magnum opus Fatherland bore the title Roots in preproduction, while Chameleon’s opening credits pay tribute to the title sequences of Rich Man, Poor Man and its sequel.5 Worth noting here also is the huaju (spoken drama)’s significance in the 1930s: this was the golden age of the modern Chinese drama anchored in realism and social criticism, as exemplified by Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm (1934).6 The implications of these different labels and the genre’s overall significance are delineated in Chang (Citation2019).7 The anthology series also found success at Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), the public broadcaster that produced Below the Lion Rock (1972-1979), perhaps the most well-known anthology series of the period, meant as a government platform addressing in realist fashion the topical, everyday concerns of grassroots citizens.8 In fact, this was Rediffusion’s third adaptation of the “Torrents” trilogy: the first was before it acquired its free-to-air license as a pay channel in 1970, and the second was mounted in 1974, a year into its free-to-air period.9 Indeed, the shows have been re-run multiple times as archival classics by Rediffusion’s successor company Asia Television Limited (ATV) prior to its termination of free-to-air broadcasting in 2016 owing to bankruptcy.10 Assisting Kam on Five Easy Pieces were Johnnie To and Wong Kar-wai, the latter contributing elements revolving around the Shanghainese émigré community in Hong Kong that would resurface in his film Days of Being Wild (1990).11 For a detailed account of the postwar tenement film, see Teo (Citation1997).12 After some tough bargaining, Sing reluctantly accepts a ten percent cut: five hundred dollars.13 As in Balzac, sums are offered here as throughout the series in precise figures, and one recalls the praise of Engels: that more can be learned from his novels about money than from historians, economists, and statisticians (Marx and Engels Citation1965).14 A phenomenon explored in The Life and Times of Wu Zhongxian (Citation2003).15 At one point even contemplating the taboo notion of Hong Kong independence.16 One recalls also the high-profile kidnappings of Patty Hearst and Aldo Moro. Chameleon’s negative characterization of the radical activist may also owe something to a reaction amongst the left against the fanaticism of the Red Guards following the end of the Cultural Revolution and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976.17 The humanization of the petty bourgeois patriarch – once the ‘class enemy’ with no redeeming facet, as in the caricatured landlord of Fifties Union productions – extends to the complex characterization of the relationship between Ching and his family amah.18 The inexorable flow of time that allows such dramas of an epic duration to achieve a cumulative effect is crucial in producing that sense of ‘lost illusions’ – to borrow Balzac’s title – or sense of progressive disenchantment to the bildungsroman’s disillusionment narrative, as has been observed by Hauser (Citation1951), Auerbach (Citation1968), and Moretti (Citation1987) about the nineteenth-century’s serialized novel.19 Berry and Farquhar, 2006, stress how the realist melodrama – established through left-wing filmmaking in Thirties Shanghai and addressing the nation via family and home – became a dominant mode of expression in Chinese cinema filming the modern.