觀影之城─台灣香港電影狂熱者建構的電影城市印象與轉型

Abstract

香港電影一直在華語社會占有重要地位，香港城市透過香港電影始終有著自我書寫的命題，也向世界華人再現這個地位特殊的城市。過去的電影城市研究較多從文本分析出發，或是由文化研究的角度切入，對城市在電影中的形象進行解碼，而缺少觀影者與電影之間的討論。 本研究透過訪談生長於台灣，自我定位為「喜愛香港電影」的觀影者，試圖從他們的香港電影城市街道空間印象作為一種研究取徑，了解觀影者建構電影城市的過程與影響元素。並借用Appadurai於其全球文化經濟理論提出的媒體向度、金融向度與意識形態向度之間的相互作用，說明這些觀影者如何指認香港電影城市，以及從80年代至今香港電影城市空間轉變的三個主要時期。分別為：「市井生活」在80年代香港電影中的城市再現、90年代末期香港電影展現的全球城市典範、後CEPA時期的香港電影城市形象轉型與隱身。 當「電影城市」作為觀影者的溝通工具透過網路科技彼此共享，進而產生社群集結之時，觀影者作為小眾狂熱的迷文化動能，逐漸發展出電影地景導向的觀光實踐。如此從觀影者出發的主動性，和近年由全球城市主導，設定觀光吸引為目標的影像宣傳極為不同，未來對於電影、城市和觀光的影響值得觀察。

The biggest producer of Chinese films has traditionally been Hong Kong, and such films project the image of the city to audiences all over the world. In Taiwan, due to a similar language and culture, audiences have had many opportunities to see these Hong Kong movies. As a result, images from these movies have accumulated in the collective consciousness of the Taiwanese people over time. For this paper, twenty-six Taiwanese fans of Hong Kong cinema have been interviewed in order to extract the street images of Hong Kong (using street as a city space element limits the scope of the work) that they have derived from these films. Most of the interviewees first began watching Hong Kong films during the explosion of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s, but they cannot be lumped with the mass Taiwanese audiences who enjoyed the films at that time. Many of the interviewees have developed a specific taste for Hong Kong cinema that goes beyond following a trend, differentiating Hong Kong film from Chinese film and treating their favorite movies as cult classics. In fact, it wasn’t until the Taiwanese fever for Hong Kong film began to cool in the late 1990s that the majority of interviewees began to understand their preference for Hong Kong movies more deeply, leading some to make actual pilgrimages to the city in order to find the “real” Hong Kong of their imaginations. This sample set, then, is particularly suitable for this study. After extracting street images from the interviewees and associating them with specific films, it became clear that there are three distinct eras of Hong Kong cinema, each with its own set of street images. They are: the streets for everyday lives of the local people in 1980s; the streets as the model of a “globalized” city in late 1990s; and the streets in the post-CEPA period representing either a highly “localized” Hong Kong or the transformation of Hong Kong into another large, faceless Chinese city in which to tell a story. Three dimensions of global cultural flow from Arjun Appadurai’s theory about social imaginary – finanscapes, ideoscapes, and mediascapes – are used to explain these different perceptions of Hong Kong city over time, allowing for a deeper understanding of how audiences imagine cinematic cityscapes. A discussion of fan preferences and the origin of these preferences reveals much about the interaction between film and audiences, and ultimately about the interaction between Taiwan and Hong Kong on a multitude of levels: cultural, financial, and political. More and more global cities are using film to project positive images in order to attract tourists. Understanding how audiences construct a cinematic city in their collective imaginations is becoming a topic of import in the information age. Using Hong Kong cinema in Taiwan as an example, this paper deconstructs this process into its bare elements.