Father absence, surrogate fathers and patricide: The meaning of father absence in pre- and post-97 Hong Kong films

Abstract

Under colonial rule, Hong Kong has always been cultivated to be a passive, dependent and marginal object. Switched between Britain and China, Hong Kong has never fully owned an independent regime, orthodoxy, discourse power and so on. If we compare father-son relationships to the process of building one’s own subjectivity, then, the representation of father absence in Hong Kong films would reflect Hong Kong’s social and political changes. Through the analysis of 97 films, such as Wong Kar Wei’s Days of Being Wild, Fruit Chan’s “97 trilogy”, Infernal Affairs series, Johnnie To’s “Election series”, this paper studies the meaning of father absence in pre- and post-97 Hong Kong films, which can be summarized as: Father Absence, Surrogate Fathers and Patricide.