From lawlessness to lawfulness : representation of law and order in Andrew Lau's Young and dangerous series

Abstract

On top of current studies on Hong Kong crime films, this thesis focuses on the representation of law and order in the Young and Dangerous series. The Young and Dangerous series provides an alternative optimism in law and order before the sovereignty handover.

The main research question is how, in the film series, the social order is enforced by the strengthening police force, as well as the collaboration with triad members. The thesis adopts a governmentality approach to investigate the various apparatuses that police officers utilised and the integral link between these apparatuses and individual behaviour in the series. The thesis divides the issue of social control into two components – territorial control and information techniques. The two-sided tale of law and order in the series is first investigated: enforcement and obedience.

The thesis investigates the interaction between the police intervention into various conflicts and chaotic situations, as well as the legal consciousness that form in the mind of triad members facing the strengthening law and order. The territorial control enforced by police officers forms the legal consciousness that triad members must follow law and order. Triad members also invent new modes of ‘street smarts’ by strategical use of the sanction brought by law and order. Besides, the thesis also focuses on the shift of the social order enforced by the collaboration of police officers and triad members. By examining the relationship between information techniques and the boundary of law and order, it is argued that the lack of information restricts the reach of police intervention (as the main agent of law and order). Police, in turn, needs the Triads to achieve comprehensive social order. The new social order, particularly in Young and Dangerous 5, shows a peculiar form of collaborative work in which ends override means. This collaboration, as the shelter defending Hong Kong from turbulence, is a fantasy based on the imagination of supreme law and order.

The thesis aims at expanding the studies of Hong Kong crime films by observing the trend of the transformation of reliable and trustworthy law and order in the series as the social imagination based on different relationship between police and gangsters. The observation of the formation of new social order with the scope of governmentality will contribute to the literature of Hong Kong film studies by a dialogue with the trend of moralistic interpretation that dominates crime film studies in Hong Kong, as well as the possible concretisation of jianghu.