A Study on the Reproduction of Subalterns in Ann Hui’s A Simple Life

Sung-Hee Jin

doi:10.18212/cccs.2016..34.002

This research paper explores how cultural texts that reflect phenomena within the world we live in and create social discussions regarding such phenomena view subalterns and the way they describe them. In order to achieve this, the present author selected the Hong Kong film A Simple Life as the subject of analysis and examined how the film reproduces the issue of Hong Kong’s female commoners and elderly, and also discusses the cultural discourse formed by the narrative constructed by the film. A Simple Life is a film about how a subaltern female maidservant and an upper class employer. However, the film focuses on its portrayal of the upper class, namely, the employer as sincerely caring for the remainder of the maidservant’s life so as to express the warmth between human beings and the possibility of equal solidarity. Furthermore, the film, in this way, delivers the hope that the issues of social and political realities in relation to commoners can be overcome. Ann Hui also places stories on Hong Kong films that seemingly have no direct connection to the lives of the main characters, in various parts of the film, with the purpose of directly portraying the lives of the characters. The director’s contrived setting of inserting scenes related to Hong Kong films in between the overall flow of the story in which the main character, who has lived her entire life in a relationship of master and servant, ends her life amidst the consideration of others is nothing but a roundabout revelation of the director’s regret for the current status of Hong Kong films and the Hong Kong which has come to serve another master, China, after escaping the British. Such a setting derives a particular narrative as the story about the current main character(within the film) and the reality of Hong Kong and Hong Kong films(outside the film) become interlinked. Thus, as it attempts to speak of the lives of subalterns, A Simple Life commits the error of again turning subalterns into the others through its text by deleting the narrative of revenge which has been articulated by the subalterns themselves. By examining the narrative configuration of A Simple Life and the construction of its cinematic devices, the study can draw out discussions on whether subalterns can speak in their own voice through cultural texts. The study can also form an arena of discourse regarding how texts that attempt to recreate subalterns and their lives should adhere to an ethical attitude or gaze toward the others.

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* 2021년 이후 발행 논문의 참고문헌은 현재 구축 중입니다.

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