Media review -Wong Ka Yan (王家欣)

“Wong Ka Yan” is a story stated back to the year of 1992 in Hong Kong about the male protagonist, Chun Yin who met and loves a girl called Wong Ka Yan, who sells ticket in the cinema. As the girl quitted the job already next day when Chun Yin went back to the cinema, he used different methods including writing letters, leaving messages to radio station and singing songs at the pier to find the girl with her name to be the only information available. During the searching process, he has encountered different Wong Ka Yan coming from different backgrounds and with difference characteristics. He gained a lot of experiences and aspirations.

The theoretical model of encoding/decoding by Hall focuses on the formation and interpretation of messages in the media. The discourse could indeed express different levels of meanings. People with different characteristics and backgrounds may come up with different interpretations and hence, obtain different meanings from the same movie. Chun Yin is a man who has passion towards music. He even creates lyrics to find the girl. Besides, different people persuade him to stop searching because there are too many girls named Wong Ka Yan in Hong Kong. However, he continues to search and insists that without great effort he cannot get what he wants. During the searching process, there is a scene showing Chun Yin is actively asking people who are related to Wong Ka Yan, which allows him to have more basic information and understanding on Wong Ka Yan whom he met. Through his actions and sayings, the message is interpreted as a man finding his lover to be romantic as some people have similar experiences when they are young. They could understand the situation of Chun Yin. Youngsters, on the other hand, have different interpretations, which is, the film encourages Hong Kong people should maintain a never give up spirit. When someone is passionate to a specific dream, he/she should persist. At the same time, when young audience looks at the scene of people asking Chun Yin to give up, they agree that some Hong Kong people focus on a harsh life and neglect their dreams. Under the encoding/decoding model, different meanings are shaped according to different audience. The message may vary from a person using different means to find his/her love to a deeper level that dreams may come true with great effort.

Furthermore, genre theory, which stated that a film is classified to a specific category based on its setting, structure and style. One of the genres of “Wong Ka Yan” is romance as it uses the plot of Chun Yin finding his beloved while another genre is collective memory. There is a scene showing a farewell in a restaurant called “Ka On Yuen” and Chun Yin invites all Wong Ka Yan he encounters to enjoy the farewell party. This scene reflects the importance of local memories as they can connect different people which allows them to realize the good days in the past.

Under the theory of encoding/decoding model,  “Wong Ka Yan” is not only a film about a man searching for his beloved, but also an encouraging story for Hong Kong People. Genre theory reveals the movie “Wong Ka Yan” is indeed a combination of romance and collective memory.

Reference:

Chandler, D. (1997). An introduction to genre theory. Media and Communication Studies: http://www. aber. ac. uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1. html.

Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. Culture, media, language, 128-138.

(548 words) 

Name: Yip Tsz Wang, Dion

Student ID: 10554232/21620872