‘’Port of Call’’ (踏血尋梅 in Chinese) is a movie produced
in 2015, directed by Yung Chi-Kwong, and is based on a real life story about
the murder of a girl, Wang Jiamei played by Jessie Li, with mainland Chinese
background after she moved to Hong Kong and lives with her mother because of
her mother’s remarriage. She soon moves out due to her tense relations with her
stepfather and works as a model and eventually steps into the world of
compensated dating, there she meets her client, Ting
Tsz-Chung played by Michael Ning, and sets off the crime scene of the movie.
The murder is then investigated by Inspector Chong, starred by Aaron Kwok, from
which the director brings the social problem and the bareness of humanity.
As identified by Dyers (2000), stereotype is an
ordering process, a ‘short cut’, referring to ‘the world’, and expressing ‘our’
values and beliefs. Stereotypes are values that people have assigned to a
certain social group. In the movie, Yung framed the movie setting as the
stereotypical Sino-Hong-Kong blended family crisis, addressing ‘our’ –Hong Kong
citizens’ values and beliefs towards the mainland Chinese.
On top of that, Yung also symbolizes drugs and
sex as a relief of Wang’s desperation for upward social mobility and Ting’s
cluster infortunes in life. In the movie, Wang asks for Ting’s assistance in
ending her life, in which she heads the power (to kill her) to a man, the
desirable figure within the patriarchal system, reinforcing Dyers' (2000) idea
of insisting on the ‘otherness’ of women and men, otherness of women, men being
in patriarchy to which women are ‘other’, because women as the ‘other’ should no
possess power in themselves, even though Wang and Ting actually hold the equal
share of power as they both act as each others’ shelters in their miserable
life.
It is true that the movie setting and the plot have
put forward the the values and beliefs within the Hong Kong society –the cross-border
blended family crisis and women occupying the subordinate position within the patriarchal
hierarchy, but the way that Yung directs the movie indicates the otherwise. For
instance, instead of focusing on the investigation process of finding the
murderer like other crime movies, Inspector Chong takes another approach of
tackling the case – to put himself into their shoes and get to know them as a
person, at the same time, he reflects himself from these two characters in
the sense that he can relate and identify himself from their experiences. Yung
managed to break through the stereotypes of a typical crime investigation plot and
hammered the heart of the audience by showing the bareness of humanity, in the
sense that audience can also identify themselves with Inspector Chong like him
does with Wang and Ting.
469 words
By Lee Lok Yee, Regina (10550405 / 21626191)
Reference:
Dyers, R. (2000). The Role of Stereotypes. In
P. Marris & S. Thornham (eds). Media Studies: A Reader.
(pp.245-251). Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press.
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回覆刪除Dear Regina, This is a good choice of film for analysis. You also grasp the idea of what the requirement of this piece of work is. There is a good balance between description of the film and analysis of it with reference to the idea of "stereotype." What makes me a bit frustrated is how the definition of stereotype can be directly used to illustrate your personal opinions. In fact, when you said "Stereotypes are values that people have assigned to a certain social group", what and whose social groups are examined? Do you mean younger generation in the film? Male? Or something else? This would result in some different arguments which enrich your work.
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