The Mobfathers

Released on the 31^st of March 2016, The Mobfathers is about a mob group-- Ching Hing is about to shift the dragon head(chief leader) to replace the old one after he is retired. The story begins at addressing the traditional election system of Ching Hing chief leader, is that the board of the directors used to select a leader out of all the branches in the mob, who is in the favored of the directors so as to keep their power over the mob. Another candidate will be chosen just to make a “fair” scene to the group but the result is actually all set. The climax of the movie begins when different branches’ leaders were dissatisfied by this system and they rise to gain support for getting to participate the election as candidates. Bringing up the “one person one vote” slogan, and revealing other leader’s scandals, leaders from different branches gain supports from their followers. 

After the premiere release of The Mobfathers, film reviews were published right away and many of the film critics stated that they could see a lot of political implications from the movie. “The leader election in the movie is sarcastically reflecting the chief executive election system of Hong Kong”, said by Ho-tak, a film critic from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. Many of the film critics interpreted the content of The Mobfather as the reflection of the Hong Kong’s political environment. Theory of articulation can be observed here. As Hong Kong’s current political environment is that many conflicts between people and the Government had happened to fight for the “true democracy”. Judgments about the Chief Executive’s election system were unceasingly heard. According to Hall, codes that can find in the media content are “means by which power and ideology are made to signify in particular discourses”(2000). 

In addition to Barthes, Lavers and Smith’s book, the connotative levels of signifiers have “a close communication with culture, knowledge, history” (1968). Under such tense cultural discourse that Hong Kong is facing, people tend to be more easily to connect certain media text into such political and cultural context. The essential linkage from the election in the movie to the Chief Executive election has been made. This interpretation has shown the contextualization that the film critics have, in which they relate the media text (the election) in to the current cultural and political context of Hong Kong.

On the flipped page, one of the Hypothetical Positions of Decoding Analysis (2000), which suggested by Hall can be seen in the case. He suggested three possible decoding positions to analyze how audiences decode the messages from the media content. 

The film critics had decoded The Mobfathers into an implication form of Hong Kong’s political culture, instead of just see the way in which the content was generated. In this case, the film critics are taking the Oppositional position in which argues audiences have their own decoding to the text.  The film critics are playing an active role to decode the text.

Due to the alternative or new decoding and interpretation of the text by audiences, the content of The Mobfathers has been controversial since it was released. The contextualization of audiences has shown the incarnation of the theory of articulation in which people relate the media text to the current cultural, political or other social context they are in. Audiences take the opposite position to interpret the text in a whole new way.

References

Barthes, R., Lavers, A., & Smith, C. (1968). Elements of semiology. New York: Hill and Wang.

Hall, S. (2000.) Encoding/Decoding. In P. Marris & S. Thornham (eds.). Media Studies: A Reader. (pp.51-61). Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press.

Ho, T. (2016). The Mobfathers: Hong Kong Society in a Macbeth way. Filmcritics.org.hk. Retrieved 10 April 2016, from http://www.filmcritics.org.hk/node/2007

  

Tsoi Ka Ying

10555540/ 21620818

words: 553