The Hong Kong Culture in Zuni Icosahedron’sEast Wing West Wing"" ""
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Thang, Hsin-Yeh
Abstract
Zuni Icosahedron’s “East Wing West Wing” series, which allude to the audiences the current political ecology of Hong Kong has created a unique style of political mockery and provided a special way to analyze Hong Kong culture. This thesis is an attempt to sort out the democratic development of Hong Kong ""Post-1997"" and redefine the cultural implications of these series by analyzing the performances that Director Mathias Woo and the performers made in a series of ten episodes in the last decade. This thesis is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, the researcher firstly reviewed the relevant literatures collected during the research period. The second chapter is for history review - discussing the Post-1997 Hong Kong People identity and cultural situation, broadly introducing the definition of Post-1997 and related theatrical presentations and trying to view the “cultural constructions” made by Zuni and Director Mathias Woo. The concepts and contents of the first four episodes of “East Wing West Wing” along with their influences to Hong Kong society and people are discussed in the third chapter. In the fourth chapter, the performances performed in the fifth through tenth episodes are analyzed and discussed. These are the episodes that Director Mathias Woo directs without joint-directing with Director Edward Lam as they do the first four episodes. From this stage, Woo’s directing style has entered a changing and unstable stage. The performances successively got both praises and blames from the dramatic criticisms. The influences that “East Wing West Wing” used to have on Hong Kong society were found declined. However, there were still bright spots on the show, especially the uses of appropriation and parody that made the balances between entertainments and discussions. In the fifth and last chapter, the researcher described her observations of the TV culture element, skillful uses of Chinese Mandarin and English languages (Cantonese is the major language used in the shows), appeareance of “Taiwan” in their talks, performances of individual actors and selection of the theme used of the “East Wing West Wing” series. To close, she summarized her findings and overall conclusions of the thesis and made suggestions on the direction of future researches. Results of the analyses made in the research period revealed that while Directors Woo and Lam used various comedy techniques in the “East Wing West Wing” performances to show their “theme” of satirizing the consecutive execution blunders of all three Hong Kong Chief Executive Officers since 1997, they also traced back the root causes of the problems. Irony and absurdity are the fundamental performance tones. After the end of his partnership with Director Edward Lam, Mathias Woo’s personal style and subjectivity have strengthened in the development of new series. Nevertheless, there were also numerous disagreed criticizes about the themes chosen and critical comments made in the performances. How Zuni Icosahedron will develop their themes to reflect Hong Kong society phenomenon in the future deserve our continuous attention from people care about Hong Kong and the improving democratic development of this “fading” Pearl of the East.
Subjects
Zuni Icosahedron
Mathias Woo
Edward Lam
“East Wing West Wing”
Hong Kong
Type
thesis
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