Reconstruction Vol. 15, No. 2
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Is it a teen film? Girl in Hong Kong cinema / Chui Ping Iris Kam [1]
Introduction
<1> Teen film as a genre is never a spotlight in the Hong Kong cinema, nor does it receive any extended critical attention in film analysis and financial investment. In light of this failure to acknowledge the full significance of the imaginary of young people on screen, it is important to ask how the imaginary of young people is used to communicate ideas about the relationships between mass culture and the everyday life of young people. Most of the gender and cultural studies in Hong Kong have examined the role of social institutions, such as the labour market, education, the State, Law, and family. Only a few articles have been found to examine the role of mass culture in this process (see, for examples Cheung, 1997; Chan and Wong, 2004). In the study of Fung and Ma (2000), they argue that "the media portrayal toward gender in Hong Kong still presents evidence of the powerful social pressure to mold both females and males to some standardized sex role" (p. 78). Although the influence of mass culture is mentioned, these studies are not about sexuality or romance of teenage girls in contemporary Hong Kong. It is precisely this concern that shapes the necessity to produce a new discourse for the study of the images of girls in the romance genre on screen. Focusing on The Truth about Jane and Sam and My Wife is 18, I examine how the responses and reactions of girls do not conform to social expectations, forcing us to explore how this might raise significant questions about the power dynamics between body and age in shaping the imaginary of girls on screen.
<2> There is a lot of literature about girls, identity and romance in the fields of gender and cultural studies globally. For instance, Driscoll (2002) argues that mainstream cultural texts such as girls' magazines assume heterosexuality is the norm and therefore equate the development of gender identity with sexuality - to become woman is to become heterosexual - which consequently reproduces a normative image of girls. Christian-Smith (1988, 1990 and 1994) finds that heterosexual romance is depicted as providing fundamental meaning to heroines' lives and is a necessary part of their growth into womanhood. Significantly, Gilbert and Taylor (1991), McRobbie (1991) and Pecora (1999) reach the same conclusion about the primacy of heterosexual romance in teen romance heroines' lives in fictions published in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia in the latter half of the twentieth century. Driver (2007) argues that assumptions concerning gender and sexuality underpin how we come to make sense of girls' desires and behaviours. Renold and Ringrose (2013) also argue that "the discourse of sexualisation is gaining hegemonic status in the way that childhood sexualisation is framed" (p. 248). Shugart et al (2001) on the other hand argue that media re-inscription of patriarchal norms of femininity as agency can make identifying hegemonic messages difficult. This is because girls always negotiate discourses of sexual knowingness and innocence within a wider context of socio-cultural gendered regulations (Renold and Ringrose, 2011).
<3> This paper focuses on the images of girls on screen; in particular, I argue that the social mechanism for the regulation of girls' desires in romance discourses can be found in any style of teen film in Hong Kong cinema. However, the regulation of teenage girls' desires within the framework of heterosexual romance on screen might not be hegemonic in nature. The medium of film, by its very nature, is a public form of expression. This paper focuses on two distinctive types of teen film that Driscoll (2011) has mentioned in her book Teen Film. One type is film which is not at all about teens even though it is categorized as a teen genre (such as The Truth about Jane and Sam) and the other type is film that contains lots of teen elements even though it is not categorized as a teen genre (such as My Wife is 18). I argue that the behaviours of girls in the romance discourse, which are not consistent to the male perspective or social expectation, are visible in different styles of teen film. With reference to Deleuze's argument of a visibility of visibility, this paper also argues that the visibility of the affectivity of girls on screen is not a sufficient condition for the images of girls to be in the spotlight for analysis. In the long run, it is necessary not only to reexamine how teen film as a genre should be defined and posited in Hong Kong cinema, but also to pay more attention to the images of girls on screen, which is an underdeveloped area in Hong Kong cultural studies.
The Study Data and Method
<4> Cinema is like a 'magic' mirror at the fairground; it reflects society back to itself, but always in a distorted fashion. It shows a slice of reality, but always from a select point of view. It is thus tempting, but problematic, to draw general conclusions about the state of society on the basis of the films that it either produces or consumes. However, if one follows the practice of psychoanalysis (if not the actual method) and focuses on the distortions themselves, then as Jameson shows in The Political Unconscious (1981), and more particularly in Signatures of the Visible (1992), even the most obviously fictionalized of fictional accounts of everyday life can be shown to reveal something significant about the way things 'really' are. That, at least, is the gambit of this paper, which traces the way the girl in Hong Kong is represented by locally produced cinema. What follows then is not an exercise in film analysis, as such, though clearly it draws on film studies, but rather an attempt to utilize films as sociologically meaningful documents that record, reflect and comment on everyday life. I pay particular attention to what I'm calling the teen film because it is clearly aimed at girls as consumers.
<5> What I aim to show in this paper is that the mirror reflection the various styles of teen film offer to Hong Kong girls is ambivalent: on the one hand, it holds out an image of liberation, but on the other hand it polices that freedom and in subtle and not so subtle ways it reinforces the need for the surveillance and control of girls' desire and behaviour. The surveillance and control of girls' desire and behaviour is more significant and apparent in romance discourse. As Pardun (2002) argues, "romantic interactions in movies - surely not the only important script that movies present, but one that can leave important impressions on an impressionable movie market: teenagers" (p. 212). As Horak (2013) argues, "cinema's adolescence was a time in which female characters were allowed to experiment with different kinds of gender and sexual expression, in a fashion similar to the new leeway permitted to young women during their teenage years" (p. 97). This paper argues that although the desires of girls have been regulated within the romance discourse in teen film, how the importance of heterosexual love to the everyday life of girls has been constructed should remain open for discussion. In particular, this paper examines how the images of girls in the romance discourse are visible in two distinctive styles of teen film. One is Derek Yee's The Truth about Jane and Sam (1999) which is categorized as a teen genre (a film for teens) but indeed it is not a teen film; the other is James Yuen's My Wife is 18 (2002) which is not a teen genre but there are a lot of teen elements in the film. The two films provide a lot of vivid examples of how the behaviours and desires of girls are regulated, as well as how the girls are responding to social expectations in everyday life. It is in this regard I argue that the regulation of teenage girls' desires within the framework of heterosexual romance on screen might not be hegemonic in nature.
<6> The film The Truth about Jane and Sam (Yee, 1999) is worth paying attention to because it is a recommended film of the year by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. It is regarded as a film for teens, as the director of the film justifies in an interview. The purpose of the film, as the director argues, is to show the humanistic concern of the society to the situation of teens in Hong Kong. According to Benny, a film critic in Hong Kong, "the theme of The Truth about Jane and Sam is to reconstruct the problems teenagers encounter in everyday life through the story of Jane and Sam" (Benny, 2000, p. 187). The film seems to fall into the teen genre category focusing on a single concern: the breakdown of traditional forms of authority such as the family. The film nonetheless is neither about teenagers nor targeted at teenagers (Lewis, 1992). The construction of twenty-one voice-overs throughout the film serves the purpose of telling the storyline to audiences as explicitly as possible. However, the massive use of verbal narratives makes the film less appealing to teen audiences (Benny, 2000, p. 187; City Entertainment, 22 July-4 August 1999, p. 73). It is in this regard that this film is intended for teens but indeed is not a teen film. This may also explain why the film did not yield a very high box office in Hong Kong (HK$4,894,497 between 20 July and 1 September 1999). However, this film is still worth studying because the visibility of the image of the girl in the romance discourse is overlooked in the media narrative.
<7> On the other hand, My Wife is 18 (Yuen, 2002) is not a teen film in the first place. The literal meaning of both the Chinese and English titles of the film places the girl, whose identity is constructed through the visual representation of the everyday life of Yoyo (played by Charlene Choi) in school and family, as well as her appearance and way of dressing, as an object for description. When the audiences read the title, they will easily fall into the position of a man who has an eighteen year old wife. 'My Wife' / 'Wo Lao Po' - a wife that belongs to a man - implies that the narrative of the story is taken from an adult man perspective. In this case, it is from the perspective of a thirty year-old man named Cheung (played by Ekin Cheng). Indeed, both Charlene Choi and Ekin Cheng were popular teen idols in the 2000s and 1990s respectively. From the narrative of the film, it is also hard to categorize it as teen genre as it is about an arranged marriage between a thirty year-old man and an eighteen year-old girl. However, there are a lot of teen elements displayed in the film, such as what teenagers will do in leisure time and what they think about romance. The composition of these elements makes the film very appealing to teen and young adult audiences. It is in this regard I argue that this film is actually for and about teens. In fact, the film yielded the box office of HK$7,265,131 between 25 September and 6 November 2002. It is a relatively high record compared to the records for teen films in Hong Kong, given that the film industry in Hong Kong has been shrinking in the 21st century.
Film as a teen genre but not a film for and about teens: The voice of girls towards romance in The Truth about Jane and Sam (1999)
<8> The Truth about Jane and Sam is a Hong Kong film co-produced by Hong Kong's Film Unlimited and Singapore's Raintree Pictures, directed by Hong Kong director Derek Yee, and stars Singapore actress Fann Wong (Jane) and Taiwanese male singer Peter Ho Yun-Tung (Sam). This pairing reflects the truth that Hong Kong is a hybrid city populated by people from diverse cultures. The film begins with the act of Sam staring at Jane, which allows audiences to know the everyday life of Jane under a male gaze.
<9> The meaning of the English and Chinese titles of the film is consistent with the theme of the film. While the English title The Truth about Jane and Sam literally refers to the narrative of the truth by Jane and Sam, truth in this respect is the perspective of Jane and Sam with respect to their everyday lives. The Chinese title of the film is Zhen Xin Hua, which literally means "the talks from the bottom of heart." The literal meaning of 'from the bottom of heart' in Chinese is 'Zhen Xin', which refers to the names of Jane and Sam respectively. The narrative of the truth about Jane and Sam is conducted by twenty-one voice-overs in the film. If one of the functions of voice-over, as Tong (2008) argues, is to let audiences hear the characters' inner subjective feelings, the purpose of placing twenty-one voice-overs for the construction of the storyline in the film is to correspond to the theme of the film that has been addressed in the Chinese title of the film, that is, to let audiences hear the talks (about life and love) that are made from the bottom of heart of Jane and Sam.
<10> The twenty-one voice-overs are made up by the voices of Jane and Sam and they act like a dialogue between them. The dialogue between Jane and Sam has two meanings here. On the one hand, it narrates the love story between Jane and Sam and explains the inner feelings of the characters. On the other hand, it constructs the care of 'adult' to 'teenager' in contemporary Hong Kong society. The caring attitude of an 'adult' (in the role of Sam) is fully revealed in the voice-overs of Sam who explains to audiences the vulnerable situation of a teenager (in the role of Jane) and why teenagers deserve help in contemporary society ('she is living in a very poor conditioned place' [2], 'her life is similar to an abandoned cat and thus she is hiding herself from the nightlife', 'I believe she is thinking nothing, which is similar to the life of mine that does not know what I want', 'cleaning for her because I want her to have a warm home', 'Jane is a non-greedy girl and she is easy-to-life').
<11> The voice-overs of Jane on the other hand reconfirm the fact that the care of adult (Sam) would make her life (as a teenager) change and become different. At one point in the film when Jane is looking at a photo of herself taken by Sam, she decides to change her life back onto the normal track. This coincides with Lacanian notions of the mirror stage in which she is moving into the symbolic and hence is codified by the social 'norm' to grow up into the sorts of social conformity against which she rebels. Her narrative therefore fully reveals to audiences how she changes her life from a negative attitude to a positive one after encountering Sam (such as not avoiding life through drugs anymore, finding meaning through employment). Trenzado Romero, a Spanish critic, argues that "the family setting features so prominently in Spanish cinema due to its multifunctional narrative potential" (Fouz-Hernández, 2007, p. 225). In the case of The Truth about Jane and Sam, the narrative potential of the family setting has been used in a rather narrow manner to represent the lack of caring between Jane and her family which is substituted by the care of the opposite sex within a heterosexual romance discourse. Part of the voice-overs of Jane is conducted in a dialogue where Jane asks and answers herself the reasons for her changing behaviours. ('Why do I allow Sam to touch my face?', 'Because I am in lack of care for a long time', 'Why do I initiate a kiss to Sam which is my first time to a man because I fall for him'). The caring attitude of adult to teenager, which symbolizes the importance of familial care to the development of teenagers, has been repackaged with the importance of romance in changing the life and restructuring the identity of a teenage girl.
<12> The importance of the element of love in the construction of the life and personal identity of Jane is reinforced when Jane returns back to the life of 'fallen angel' because of a lie told by Sam. (The term 'fallen angel' is mentioned in the interview of Fann Wong and Peter Ho Yun-Tung in a film magazine (City Entertainment, 8-21 July 1999, pp. 44-45). The argument between Jane and Sam, which is triggered by different interpretations of romance after a lie Sam has told to his parents to cover the background of Jane, invites audiences not to follow a male narrative in the construction of the image and subjectivity of the girl. This is because the lie itself is symbolically important to the construction of the theme of the film. The act of telling a lie itself is an unacceptable thing since the theme of the film is to narrate the 'truth' about Jane and Sam from the bottom of heart. This reminder indeed has been made to the audiences through the mouth of Jane in the beginning of the film when Jane calls out the Chinese name of Sam - Li Xiao Xin, which literally translates to 'You (as a girl) [should] Be Careful [when talking to a boy]' in English. This gender dimension of the film indeed has been neglected in the media narrative. In this regard, I argue that the images of teenage girl should deserve a detailed investigation of how they are functioning in an identity construction of their own. This claim echoes to Driscoll's (2002) arguments concerning the conceptions of girlhood in the West.
<13> In conversation between Jane, Sam and Sam's parents, Jane is frank to Sam's parents that she does not know if she is Sam's lover, even though Jane has already had sex with Sam. Having sex in this respect is not associated with marriage in the eyes of Jane. Such an assumption is made by adults (Sam's parents) because Jane is a deprived girl in society and reliance on man seems to be the sole way out for her. While young women/girls are supposed to have choices in the neoliberal market according to the postfeminist framework (McRobbie 2009), Jane is excluded from such an account because she as a young woman is not regarded to have "a range of capacities" to act as "agent of change" (p. 6). As a fallen angel, Jane comes from a broken family and she spends her days smoking, taking drugs and boozing, loitering at nights and sleeping in the daytime.
<14> Investigating the images of girls in the romance discourse offers us chances to rethink the very assumptions of gender and sexuality that underpin how we come to make sense of girls' desires and behaviours (Driver, 2007). Although the voice of Jane reconfirms the significance of the love of Sam in her life, her voice also serves the purpose of telling audiences what has been said and perceived to be girls in contemporary Hong Kong may not totally be consistent to a female perspective. The male perspective, as I argue, is full of adults' assumptions. Since the film aims at "the restoration of the adult culture informed rather than radicalized by youth" (Lewis, 1992, p. 3), I argue that The Truth about Jane and Sam is not for and about teens. The uncertainty of Jane toward her relationship with Sam reflected in the argument between Jane and Sam provokes the rethinking of whether sexuality is a dialogical process instead of a fixed identity for the construction of identity of girls in society.
Film that is not teen genre but contains lots of teen elements: The revelation of a girl's desires in My Wife is 18 (2002)
<15> The arranged marriage set up in the beginning of the film is supposed to be one of convenience in which the agency of both Yoyo and Cheung is completely driven by parental instruction. (At first glance, the film is not consistent with the social expectations towards the role and behaviour of girls in contemporary Hong Kong because, as the film director argues in a film magazine interview, it is less likely that girls in contemporary Hong Kong will accept arranged marriage nowadays (City Entertainment, 21 November -4 December 2002, pp. 25-26). As a result, the director set the arranged marriage in the United Kingdom with the intention that audiences will accept the plot device. It is in this regard I argue that My Wife is 18 is not a teen film because the issues addressed in the film, such as an arranged marriage, are not confined to the social expectations of teenage girls or the social norm of contemporary Hong Kong. This is because unlike Jane in The Truth about Jane and Sam who is not regarded as having the capacity to change, the future of Yoyo in My Wife is 18 is optimistic and full of choices because she is still in school while an arranged marriage would block the potentiality of her life. If the narrative potential of the family setting used in The Truth about Jane and Sam is to represent the lack of care from Jane's family which paves the way for the substitution of the care within a heterosexual romance discourse, the potential narrative of the family setting in My Wife is 18 is to represent the inner self of the teenage girl with respect to parental instruction.
<16> As mentioned previously, the title of the film makes itself explicit that the film is not made from the perspective of teenagers. When the audiences read the title of the film, they will easily fall into the position of a man who has a wife at her age 18. The English title of the filmMy Wife is 18 indicates plainly that the story is about 'a man's wife who is eighteen years old'. The Chinese title of the film Wo Lao Po Ng Gou Cheng on the contrary provides audiences some space to imagine how the image of a teenage girl is constructed with her age. 'Eighteen years old' is translated to 'Ng Gou Cheng' in Chinese, which literally means 'not have enough scale' and in English refers to 'less than expected'. (The phrase 'Ng Gou Cheng' is used in Cantonese, not Mandarin/Standard written Chinese.) However, it is conceptually misleading to translate 'eighteen years old' to the term 'not have enough scale' because people who are eighteen years old will be granted a full citizenship in Hong Kong. The Chinese title of the film implicates that Yoyo is not 'qualified' as a wife because she is not an ideal model according to the male standard. The Chinese phrase 'not have enough scale' therefore conveys two meanings for the social image of a 'teenage girl', even though Yoyo reaches her age of 18. On the one hand, age implies a scale of increasing maturity from adolescence to adulthood; and on the other hand the body shape of a teenage girl has not yet developed to its fullest compared to that of an adult woman.
<17> The agency of Yoyo in My Wife is 18 is prescribed as what Driscoll calls 'the dominant model of sexuality', in which girls are constituted as an object of masculine desire. However, it is not a smooth and easy process for Yoyo, an eighteen-year-old girl, to be an object for desire of an adult man. This point can be illustrated by the changing way of dressing of Yoyo - in cheongsam and coiling her hair with a topknot, like the image of Su Li-zhen in Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) - so as to make herself look like an adult in the dinner gathering among Cheung and his secondary school classmates without prior noticing Cheung when she falls for him (similar to the storyline of The Truth about Jane and Sam, Yoyo falls for Cheung because he takes very good care of her when she catches a cold). The way of dressing becomes a concern to Yoyo when she realizes that age difference is a concern for Cheung. This is because Cheung always treats her as a teenage girl and shows no interest to her. (The arranged marriage is set for fulfilling the desire of Cheung's ninety-three-year old grandmother who wants to see her grandson Cheung getting married before she passes away. Cheung and Yoyo accept the arrangement of their parents at last as a way to show their respect to their parents by acting according to the will of their parents. They have no illusions about any lasting bliss; they intend to be divorced within a year.)
<18> However, the displacement effect of the look of Su Ki-zhen on Yoyo nonetheless exposes the issue of age to the upfront and leads to a big quarrel between Cheung and Yoyo after they go home after a dinner gathering. The quarrel is triggered by the discontentment of Cheung to Yoyo who deliberately dresses up and speaks like a mature woman. In other words, the quarrel is the result of Yoyo's attempt to change the socially perceived image of what a teenage girl should be. Zhou (2009) argues that women cease to be an object for male desire at the price of the negation of their own bodie in her article about the representation of gender and sexuality in modern Chinese film. In the case of Yoyo, she is not an object for desire of an adult man in the first place because of her age which shows in terms of her appearance and her flat body. However, when Yoyo takes off her clothes and asks Cheung whether she is attractive or not in the middle of the quarrel, the socially perceived image of the teenage girl has been destroyed. According to Lam (2004), one of the crucial criteria for the construction of this ideal female image is the potentiality of this girl image for the projection of desire of others while nevertheless she herself should be deprived of any (sexual) desire to others. Because Yoyo's act of taking off clothes in front of an adult man, it makes the desire of a teenage girl visible to Cheung and to audiences and hence makes Yoyo no longer the ideal female image as a teenage girl in society. In other words, the body of Yoyo "as a little girl, for her body lacks the physical marks of true womanhood" is dissolved through the revelation of her desire. The sex move of Yoyo therefore conveys "something otherworldly erotically charged, and not little girl" (Studlar, 2010, p. 27). Although Yoyo is placed as an object for description, as the title of the film insists, it is the revelation of her desire that makes her truly become a wife of an adult man at her 18 year old in the end of the film.
<19> In fact, before the sex scene between Yoyo and Cheung, the desire of Yoyo has already been made visible to audiences through the use of jokes. However, the words of Yoyo in the jokes do not take effect because the jokes are coming from the mouth of a teenage girl, who is also 'ng gou cheng' in the eyes of an adult man. Yoyo likes to say 'it is a joke' to erase the embarrassment on sensitive issues. For instance, Yoyo is so excited to tell the ground personnel of Hong Kong International Airport that the purpose of her trip is for marriage. In addition, when she pushes Cheung away to the door after she has had sex with him, there is a close shot of her crying behind the door. This makes the audiences believe that Yoyo is using the word 'joke' to cover her desire as it is not allowed for the ideal image of girl in society. According to the social norm, it will be a bit too young for a girl at her age to get married as the median age at first marriage for males was 31.2 and that for females was 28.9 in 2011.
<20> As Freud (1927) argues, the joke is a form of humor that individuals use to triumph over the inevitable limitations of life. In a similar vein, Lacan (1997) views humor as an important aspect of the individual's developing capacity to address the limitations imposed by society, mortality and the unspeakable terror of the real. In the case of Yoyo, she is using jokes to challenge the very limited understanding of contemporary Hong Kong society with respect to teenage girls' desires. It is also in this regard I argue that My Wife is 18 indeed is a teen film because the ideas about adolescence, that is, the capacities of the body of the girl to affect and to be affected (in Deleuze's sense), are visible in the film.
Visibility of the affectivity of girls on screen and the issue of visibility<21> Delezue and Guattari argue in Anti-Oedipus that desire is controlled and channeled by social regimes, because uncontrolled desire is revolutionary in its essence and threatens the structure of society. The desires of girls in both The Truth about Jane and Sam and My Wife is 18 are to a certain extent regulated and constructed within heterosexual love discourse. For instance, the contested ideas of the decision to marry or not, no matter on what grounds the decision would be made, are visible in the two films - Jane in The Truth about Jane and Sam did not associate the act of having sex with marriage and Yoyo in My Wife is 18 wanted to get married at 18 year old even though she is still in school. Since the body of the girl which has never been recognized as mature and old enough by society to legitimize its sexuality and desire (such as talking about sex and marriage) in these films are visible, it invites the thought of the potentiality of the body as a flesh pedagogy to disrupt the symbolic order (the civilized world based on adult (men's) assumptions). The feminine subjectivity played by girls on screen also works as a site of disruption in and through which dominant striations of (heterosexual) adult subjectivity would be problematized. As Deleuze argues, "bodies have an age, they mature and grow old; but majority, retirement, any given age category, are incorporeal transformations that are immediately attributed to bodies in particular societies" (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p. 81).
<22> To acknowledge the body of the girl that is dislocated from psychological conceptual models and teleological regimes (that is, not developmental and progressive), it "disrupts relationships between age and affect" (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 283). The presence of girls in the various styles of teen film in Hong Kong as discussed previously has reinforced the importance and necessity of heterosexual love in their everyday lives. However, at a closer examination of how the images of the girls are constructed, in terms of their views of romance and life, as well as their desires and sexuality, the findings of this paper illustrate that the various acts of teenage girls are not expressive but constitutive to the model of feminine subjectivity in which "a series of disjunctures and conjunctures between girls and women" (Driscoll, 1997, p. 1465) form assemblages of girl and woman as "experiential and identificatory schemas" (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 277). The acts of teenage girls may not be reflective of the society that regulates the everyday lives of women and girls; they are affective in themselves.
<23> In other words, affectivity is a state that anyone, regardless of age, can embody; it is the capacity of the body to affect and to be affected. The visibility of the affectivity of girls on screen enhances a greater power to disseminate such performance widely: "some spaces for performance are public by virtue of having a greater social visibility and hence a greater power to disseminate widely than others and that access to public performance may be limited or facilitated by social power structures" (Berry, 2009, p. 171). Although Berry addresses the issue of performativity particularly in the context of gay life in China, he also argues "this question of access to and regulation of public discourse is relevant in any society" (p. 172). The visibility of any gender performance is closely associated with its relations to public discourses. Since not much attention has been paid to the images of girls on screen in Hong Kong cultural studies, the discursive power of girls has somehow been weakened. In order to enhance a greater power to disseminate the performativity of the visibility of the affectivity of girls, it is first of all of equal importance to pay more attention to the image of girls on screen. In particular, more studies are needed to enrich the understanding of the capacities of the body of the girl to affect and to be affected in the romance discourse on screen.
<24> For the understanding of the visibility of ideas about adolescence, such as the capacities of the body of girls to affect and to be affected in the various styles of teen film, it is necessary to reconsider how teen film as a genre should be defined and posited in Hong Kong cinema as it may restrict the discursive power of the imaginary of girls. This is because, as Driscoll (2011) argues, the film classification systems in different countries more or less serve a similar purpose of restricting the idea of adolescence to a scale of increasing maturity which is supported by "a very varying set of social expectations" (p. 124). As a result, it always leaves the designation of maturity and of adulthood, as well as the relationships between children and maturity represented in teen film, uncertain to audiences. This uncertainty not only leads to variation in the definition of teen film but at the same time contributes to its liminal nature as a genre. In this regard, I argue that Jenkins' (2005) definition of teen film - as one whose main characters are teenaged, whose themes address primarily teen issues and thus do not go beyond the purpose of social regulation, and whose audiences are teen and young adult - may not be sufficient to articulate the complicated relationship between the production and consumption of teen film. As Driscoll argues further, teen film in contemporary societies is more "sophisticated and self-conscious" (p. 45) due to the variety of audiences that teen film is addressing and thus makes the meaning of teen film even more difficult to define. For instance, we may need to rethink whether Wu's argument - that is, that the discussion on the representation of adolescents on screen is always associated with a problem to society in 1960s and this practice has not changed much nowadays (Wu, 2005, p. 33) - is still appropriate for the understanding of the development of teen film in contemporary Hong Kong. Instead of restricting the discussion about teen film in Hong Kong cinema to the meaning of teen film as a genre, that is, as film for and about adolescents, it is more important to start thinking about how the concept of modern adolescence (such as the possibility of the body of the girl to affect and be affected) has been represented. The reconsideration of the meaning of teen film is important to the development of teen film in Hong Kong cinema because the popularity of teen film as a genre, in terms of Box Office in Hong Kong cinema and the intention of producers to invest in such a genre, are very low.
<25> However, the redefinition of teen film does not guarantee that the visibility of the affectivity of girls on screen will then be in the spotlight for analysis. For the issue of a visibility of visibility, Chow (2007) references the work of Deleuze to explain the complexity of the issue of visibility. As she said, "visibilities are not to be confused with elements that are visible or more generally perceptible, such as qualities, things, objects, compounds of objects". In other words, visibilities are more than "the acts of a seeing subject" or "the data of a visual meaning" (p. 11). This justifies why the images of girls, including their desires and sexuality, would be trivialized and neglected easily in the film narrative (such as the case of Jane in The Truth about Jane and Sam) even though they are visible in the film. As she argues further, a visibility is "the condition of possibility for what becomes visible" (p. 11). McRobbie (2009) describes such a condition of possibility as a "space of attention" (the term is inspired by forms of luminosity in Deleuze's sense): "This luminosity captures how young women might be understood as currently becoming visible. The power they seem to be collectively in possession of is created by the light itself" (p. 60). In other words, even though the images of girls are visible in teen films, it is also necessary to derive a certain intelligibility to capture the body of the girl on screen for analysis and re-interpretation. (For further discussion of feminine subjectivity of the girl in contemporary Hong Kong, please refer to Kam, 2014 for reference).
Conclusion
<26> As this paper has illustrated, the regulation of teenage girls' desires within the framework of heterosexual romance on screen might not be
hegemonic in nature. The views of teenage girls towards romance that do not conform to the male standard in their narratives are visible in the various
styles of teen film in Hong Kong - such as film as teen genre but not a film for and about teens, as well as film that is not teen genre but contains lots
of teen elements. The identification of the uniqueness of the voices of girls in cultural representations has no relation to the argument that 'we're
better feminists than feminists' (Projansky, 2007, p. 203). On the contrary, this paper wants to put forth an argument that a new lens for analyzing
feminine subjectivity of girls is needed. The situation is similar to the representation of gender roles in Chinese films that do not depict a stable
universality, as Tan et al argue in their book Chinese Connections: Critical Perspectives on Film, Identity, and Diaspora (2009). Without a new
lens or perspective, the diversity of girls' responses and reactions to the male narrative in romance discourse on screen will be overlooked easily and the
visibility of girls in terms of their relationship to public discourses will be often in question.
Notes
[1] Iris Kam is working as a Research Fellow for projects in relation to sustainability issues in Hong Kong at City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include Critical Theory, Sexuality and Gender, Girl Studies, Popular Culture, Formation of Subjectivities and Critical Pedagogy. Her corresponding email address is iriskamcp@hotmail.com.
[2] All quotes from films are author's own, translated from the original Chinese.
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