Brick Slaves (樓奴) is a TV romantic-comedy drama broadcasted in TVB in 2015. The drama is reflecting Hong Kong is a high cost of living country, with using extremely high prices and buy a tiny flat; however Hong Kongers are willingly and desirously to own a dream house in their life even though sacrificing their dream or losing freedom. The drama is describing a property company manager- Jack Lau Yiu-ming, who used ten years to save enough money to buy a flat and plan to get married with his girlfriend. In his saving process, not only emphasizing on his job, he is willing to admonish all luxurious products, maintaining a simply and frugal life persistently. Lau facing as many as obstacles in both marriage and occupation, he started desperate and struggling how to pay the house mortgage. Afterwards, he met a new tenant Cecilia Choi Kin-ching, at first they were tense and setting couples of rules for each other, while experiencing many things together and become couples finally. They realized they all have their unique dream. At the end, Lau resolutely to sell his flat and established a restaurant to fulfill his dream, Choi also chose to become a pianist without regrets. It brings out the message that everyone has choice to choose their way of living, happiness is simple to fulfill, not only following the parrot, freely to choose what you need.
The name of drama "Brick Slaves" actually becomes Hong Kong citizens' identity and an irony simultaneously. The drama is growing popularity is due to it reflecting the social realistic phenomenon; the characters in the drama are just presenting us in the real world. We all acknowledge that Hong Kong property prices are irrational and unworthy, ridiculously; we still pay much effort on saving money to obtain a flat. Because the "property" is assigning symbolic meanings of enjoying stable life and owning a flat is the basic requirement of building up a family. According to Ma, "The construction of cultural identity is a process that selects from a rich diversity of social practices to form a public version of a common identity. Since the formation of cultural identity includes a process of boundary of drawing, the confirmation of identity often involves the exclusion of others. (Ma, 2005, 77)" Under this circumstance, the general public is involved in the same membership of categorization and discoursed as a "flat slaves". "It also becomes the public version of the prominent identity at the same time. (Ma, 2005, 79)" In contrast, the drama also appeared some high social status people, which showed other groups of categorization, they don't need to worry about getting a property or how to obtain a materialistic life. However, do they obtaining happiness in their life? Not really, the character Miss Lei Oi-wah, the CEO of the All-In-One Property Company, she wanted to obtain her husband love and the health instead owning the property. The presentation method of the drama is quite relaxed and loose, instead tense and moody; audience can easily project their emotion into those characters (general public) and obtain the theme successfully.
In addition, "Brick Slaves" indicated the hierarchal system in the society. One important setting is in the office (All-In-One Property Company), the drama showed various office tactics, for instance almost all employees to win favor by fawning on the CEO, using deferential tone to facing her, as she is the top in the company and you must follow her instruction in any situations. Furthermore, you can also see the poster below, showing Lei and her husband (upper class) sitting on the building, however the building squashed the general public. Using decoding and encoding communication process, the poster once again showed the disparity gap between the rich and the poor.
To conclude, "Brick Slaves" is a meaningful and presentation based on audience's real experience in order to influence the public.
Reference: Ma, K. E. (2005). Culture, politics, and television in Hong Kong. London: Routledge.
Chandler, Daniel (1997): 'An Introduction to Genre Theory' URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf7/4/2016
Student name: Sin Chung Yan, Crystal
Student no: 10555115/21620774
680words
Dear Crystal, The discussion of the drama is straightforward. You can try to be more critical by discussing whether the drama reinforces the stereotype of the rich and the poor. Why does it do so and what possible impacts that the drama would have? This can help you produce a piece of work with certain complexity. The introductory paragraph can be cut shorter.
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