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The violence of time and memory undercover: Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs

2006; Routledge; Volume: 7; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649370600849264

1469-8447

Law Wing‐sang,

Socioeconomic Development in Asia

Abstract Abstract 1997 as a global media spectacle about Hong Kong’s handover of its sovereignty from Britain to China is now almost forgotten; yet Hong Kong is still caught between the politics of time and memory too complex to be captured under simple post‐colonialist notion such as ‘hybridity’. This paper tries to put in perspective a (post‐)colonial cultural politics of counter‐memory in Hong Kong cinema by investigating its decades‐long investment in a sub‐genre built around the motif of undercover‐cop. Specifically, the example of the blockbuster Infernal Affairs series is analyzed in details, with particular attention to its innovative plot, to show how the ‘structure of feeling’ about Hong Kong’s political fate is embedded in the films underpinning their local box‐office success. The allegorical reading of the film series attempted in this paper also connects the discussion about the ‘political unconscious’ of Hong Kong, now and in the past, with the wider problem of how the future political subjectivity of Hong Kong will take shape. Keywords: Memorygangster filmstimestructure of feelingundercoverallegoryHong Kong Notes 1. Quentin Lee’s article aroused a debate in Hong Kong after its publication (Lee 1994 Lee, Quentin. 1994. ‘Delineating Asian (Hong Kong) intellectuals: speculations on intellectual problematics and post/coloniality’. Third Text, 26: 11–23. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). His position was taken as representative of the ‘hybridists’ although there has never been a coherent perspective among the authors I sample here. Ip characterizes the pervasive but unsystematic discourse of hybridity exists in Hong Kong like a phantom (Ip 1997 Ip, Iam‐chong. 1997. “‘The phantom of marginality and hybridity’ ”. In Cultural Imaginaries and Ideology , Edited by: Chan, Stephen C.K. 31–52. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). For details of the relevant debates, see Ip (1997 Ip, Iam‐chong. 1997. “‘The phantom of marginality and hybridity’ ”. In Cultural Imaginaries and Ideology , Edited by: Chan, Stephen C.K. 31–52. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) and a special supplement ‘Hong Kong Culture’ of The Tabloid – City Magazine, July 1995. 2. Although a naïve and deceptive vision of the 1997 handover, which was recently in vogue, characterizes the 1997 sovereignty handover as simply the ‘hoisting of a different flag; the singing of a new national anthem,’ the lingering notion of 1997 in public discourses bears out the fact that for the local populace, 1997 has never gone far away. From 2002 to 2004, a number of issues – most notably, the National Security Laws (Article No. 23), the controversies over patriotism, and the People’s Congress’ interpretation of the Basic Law (which throws out the widely‐supported calls for universal suffrage and direct elections) – indicated clearly that 1997 was still an emotional issue among the people of Hong Kong. The motto ‘The year 2004 is the time when the real 1997 arrives’ (Lui 2004 Lui, Tai‐lok. 2004. ‘Only now we know 2004 is 1997’. Hong Kong Economic Journal , 10/3/2004. [Google Scholar]) is more than a play of words; it is a manifestation of how 1997 continues to haunt Hong Kong. 3. For reading film as events more than texts in order to locate the social and historical energies, one may refer to Morris (1988 Morris, M. 1988. “‘Tooth and Claw: Tales of Survival, and Crocodile Dundee’”. In The Pirate’s Fiancée. Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism, London: Verso. [Google Scholar], 1998 Morris, M. 1998. “‘White panic or, mad max and the sublime’”. In Trajectories: Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies, Edited by: Chen, K.H. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). 4. The Hong Kong colonial experience is complicated by the fact that there were not many native Hong Kong people to be colonized by the British. Early Hong Kong historical records show that Chinese collaborators played a very significant role in the colonial development of Hong Kong. Chinese settlers flocking to the area helped build a colonial system, which I name Collaborative Colonialism. See Law, Wing‐sang (2002 Law, Wing‐sang. 2002. Collaborative Colonialism: A Genealogy of Competing Chineseness in Hong Kong, Sydney: University of Technology. PhD thesis (unpublished) [Google Scholar]); also Carroll (2005 Carroll, John M. 2005. Edges of Empires. Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 5. For a review of the development of the figures of undercover agents in Hong Kong cinema, please see Law (forthcoming). It is useful to point out here that although the undercover cop is the prototype of the ‘undercover’ icon, the figures of ‘undercover’ encompass far more than policeman; likewise, a story about a tragic hero is the ‘classic’ – but by no mean the only – type of undercover narrative on Hong Kong screen. 6. I have in another paper discussed the phenomenon of polarized comments of the trilogy among critics from outside Hong Kong (Law, forthcoming). For example, Leary treat the first Infernal Affairs as just another ordinary gangster thriller packaged with the ‘high concept’ blockbuster formula that allows star‐image advertising to dominate, thereby, turning a feature film into something more like a commercial (Leary 2003 Leary, Charles. 2003. ‘Infernal Affairs: High Concept in Hong Kong’. Senses of Cinema, 26 http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/26/internal_affairs.html. [Google Scholar]). While I can see the points of this general analysis, it, nevertheless, tends to gloss over the complex formation of image consumption as well as the development of sub‐genre, especially at local and regional levels, by privileging a generalized notion of ‘postmodernist’ stylistic features at the expense of the cultural variability against which the genre’s ideological and iconographic operations are played out. 7. The film’s parody of lawfulness and legality can be further understood against the backdrop of the 1997 handover, because the 1997 issue is also a paradigmatic case of refusing to live by ambivalence. The transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty in 1997 derives from the expiry date of the Lease of the New Territories. According to the Nanjing and Beijing Treaties, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula are supposed to be permanently ceded. But because the New Territories was only a piece of leased land, the UK had no right, according to British law, to rule the New Territories without either the lease’s being extended or other measures that would confer on its rule a legitimate status. However, it is to a certain extent only a British problem, since the PRC has never recognized the legitimacy of all three so‐called unequal treaties. Therefore, in theory, there is no such problem concerning ‘the expiry date of the lease.’ It was indeed the Hong Kong property tycoons who raised the issue of Hong Kong’s future in Beijing in 1981, when they paid a visit to the then Chinese leader Deng Xiao‐ping in an attempt to persuade the Chinese leaders to agree – for the sake of Hong Kong’s own ‘stability and prosperity’ – on the continuation of the Lease of the New Territories. Ironically, such a move forced Deng to face up to the issue concerning the lawful status of Hong Kong, and eventually resulted in Deng’s astonishing decision to terminate the previous policy of ambivalence; consequently, the PRC in 1982 declared that all three indissociable parts of Hong Kong would ‘resume’ under Chinese sovereignty in 1997. But the irony is also that all those who argued in those years for the indispensability of British rule for Hong Kong nowadays justify their support for the ‘resumption of sovereignty’ on the basis of patriotism and nationalism. 8. In another classic Hong Kong undercover cop story City on Fire (1987), Ko Chow (Chow Yun‐fat) and his immediate superior have a strong father‐and‐son relationship. Yet in Infernal Affairs, the relationship has evolved into a commitment to police work and to the whole idea of legal justice. See Law (forthcoming). 9. One of the major problems getting in between Hong Kong and the PRC Central government is the likelihood of Hong Kong being used as a base for anti‐China subversion activities like Sun Yat‐sen did in 1911 Republican Revolution. The massive turnout in 1989 in support of the Beijing student movement has always been quoted by the pro‐China power bloc as a proof of ‘subversive elements’ in Hong Kong using Hong Kong as a base to threaten China. The National Security Bill (Article 23) issue is about further restricting civil rights in Hong Kong; it caused huge protest demonstration in 2003 which led, eventually in 2005, to the replacement of Tung Chee‐wah, the first Chief Executive of HKSAR. 10. The audience may find in Yan’s and Ming’s therapeutic treatment a homage to the similar scene from Theft Under the Sun (1997). 11. The allegorical remark here on the role that the Security Bureau played in the 2003 National Security Bill (Article 23) is also remarkable. In the so‐called anti‐Article 23 protests, the Secretary of Security, Virginia Ip, and the Security Bureau she leads was, because of their political dispositions, a magnet for the targeted criticisms of the Bill. 12. Mr Ching Cheung’s espionage case, which emerged after Infernal Affairs’ release, sent shock waves throughout Hong Kong because the case mirrors plot devices from Infernal Affairs. Mr Ching is a Hong Kong‐born, 1970s‐generation, Maoist‐inspired political figure. He was recruited by the pro‐PRC leftist establishment and served loyally there for a long period. After June 4th, he resigned from the ‘patriotic’ newspaper Wenhuibao and has since become critical of the Chinese authorities. His resignation was seen as a defection by the ‘patriotic‐leftist’ camp but as a genuine patriotic act in the eyes of the democratic movement. As for the recent charge of espionage, some press comments contend that it is due to his over‐the‐top patriotism. According to the ironic moral, which is so commonly repeated in Hong Kong, ‘Being a Hong Kong Chinese, you have to love your country [China]…but you must not love her too much.’