Film Review - The Mobfathers

The mobfathers (2016), the story of a local triad society, Ching Hing. Ching Hing will hold a triennial election of the mob father. Candidates were elected by four senior triad members and voted by 9 triad leaders. Seven and Wolf are nominated. At the day to vote for the mob father, Seven expressed his dissatisfaction of coterie electoral system and proposed the idea of referendum.

The mobfathers is classified as Hong Kong gangster movies. Since 1970s, Hong Kong gangster movies became formally established as a film genre, creating stories about gambling, smuggling, and battles amongst gangster leaders. Gangster movies are tightly associated with violence. Erotic places, alcoholic, women were used to frame the mood of movie and to consolidate the genre. The character of Po was the symbol of loyalty. Po took care of Seven’s wife and so while he was in jail that the character of loyalty earners is essential to gangster film.

Intertextuality is to shape one’s text meaning by another text. The plot which the prostitute divined for Seven, was similar to The Tragedy of Macbeth, the general received a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become the King. The general fight for the power, yet he lost all his love that in the story of the mobfathers followed the route of The Tragedy of Macbeth (Chan, 2106). The ambitious and opinionated to be the hero finally broke him and his family down.

According to John Fiske,

“The producerly text… relies on discursive competencies that the viewer already possesses, but requires that they are used in a self-interested, productive way…. It draws attention to its own textuality, it does not produce a singular reading subject but one that is involved in the process of representation rather than a victim of it, it plays with the difference between the representation and the real as a producerly equivalent of the writerly mixing of documentary and fictional modes, and it replaces the pleasures of identification and familiarity with more cognitive pleasures of participation and production(2010).”

Referring the mobfathers, the decoding method was limited which the meaning of the film already defined by the producers. Readers have limited sources to decode the meaning of the text. It was very obvious that the story of Mobfathers is mocking the methods for selecting the Chief Executive of HKSAR and the unfairness of voting system. This is a movie which full of political metaphors. Hong Kong audiences would find the movie very appealing since many lines from the movie were directly quoted from the speech given by politicians, for example, the Wolf said ‘Oh! The door hasn’t shut down yet, freak me out.’ (哦！原來未落閘嘅！嚇死我！) The term ‘shut the door’ (落閘) is meaningful to Hongkongers, especially after 831 decision. The latter half of the movie had revealed the unethical relationship between the dirty cop and triad. The black and white (Tai Chi) bean curb from the last scene is a signifier which signified the grey areas in our reality. 

Reference

CHAN, L.H.(2016).  邱禮濤再拍江湖故事 黑幫世界窺探政治哲, Shun Po, 31/3/2016, Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/TheMobfathers/photos/pb.462862260549968.-2207520000.1460676840./575611045941755/?type=3&size=1212%2C2048&fbid=575611045941755

HKSAR. (2014). HK Film Archive presents "Ways of the Underworld - Hong Kong Gangster Film as a Genre" (with photos) [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201402/28/P201402270264.htm

Fiske, J. (2010). Understanding Popular Culture. New York, NY:Routledge.

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