Coming of Age in Post-Urban Hong Kong: An Eco-critical Approach to Land-filming

Abstract

M. M. Bakthin’s notion of the bildungsroman has been instrumental in understanding historical and social changes, as well as literature. Originally a German literary genre that “depict[s] man’s path from childhood through youth and maturity to old age, showing all those essential internal changes in a person’s nature and views that take place in him as he grows older,”(Bakhtin, 22), the bildungsroman has been used, more broadly, to portray the “coming of age” of certain cultures or certain epochs. The journey of self-growth is often characterized as “man’s emergence from youthful idealism and fantasies to mature sobriety and practicality” (ibid.). Self-development and -emergence have also been used as justifications of the imperialism of some European countries intent on expanding their power and exploitation. It is not surprising, however, to find the same emphasis on progress and development in former colonies, including Hong Kong. In such former colonies, the story is better understood as the process of growing up according to the colonial model and the limited potential to grow up otherwise. Growing up is growing into the shadow of the colonizer. To counteract the story of growing up in the shadow of the colonizer, literature and film offer spaces in which the progressive and reductive economic models that defined Hong Kong are challenged. For many writers and filmmakers in Hong Kong, coming-of-age stories are less concerned with the achievement of economic success and more focused on the development of self-awareness and free thought. This paper will focus on the eco-critical trend of recent years suggests a stronger collaboration between art and social movements, which can be exemplified in the independent film scene in recent years. In the period from its early attempts to establish its identity to its post-colonial self-(re)identification, Hong Kong has come to a kind of recognition and enlightenment, captured in its literature and cinema, which goes beyond the modernist principle. The land and nature have become a primary means of transcending the monolithic economic discourse of Hong Kong, which grew miraculously from a fishing village to a metropolitan city and of disclosing the possibilities of imagination.