Unimaginable Communities: Limits and Openings in Nationalist Discourses
Helen Hok-Sze Leung
Department of Comparative Literature
University of Wisconsin-Madison
(Preliminary draft. Please do not cite without the author's permission.)
E. J. Hobsbawm concludes his study on nationalism with the speculation that the recent
progress in the studies and analyses of nationalism might be a sign that the heyday of
nationalism is in fact over. After all, ·"the Owl of Minerva which brings wisdom, says
Hegel, flies out at dusk" (192). Hobsbawm bases his speculation on an analysis of the
contemporary global system which appears to be characterized more by "supranational
and infranational" than national activities. Indeed, the need to understand the world
beyond national and nationalist terms has been expressed by many, across diverse
disciplines: such as David Harvey's and Alain Lipietz's analyses of the dynamics of
flexible production; David Held's argument about the need for "citizenship" to be
defined in global terms; Airf Dirlik's reconceptualization of Marxism in the context of
globalization; Mike Featherstone's and and Arjun Appadurai's studies of how culture
circulates under globalized capitalism. Whether approached from an economic, political or
cultural perspective, these studies have shown persuasively that the borders of nation-states
have been divested of much of their previous power, due to the global restructuring of the
economy in the past two decades. In light of these assertions, how does one situate the
significance and relevance of Benedict Anderson's path-breaking study of nationalism,
Imagined Communities? How might Anderson's work help us understand nationalism-
and its putative decline-in the contemporary world? Is the model open or closed? The
question is in fact twofold. Is the model of analysis developed by Anderson in studying the
origins and dynamics of nationalism open to "reutilization" (to borrow a term from
Bloch)? Furthermore, does the model of the nation as a hegemonic form of community
continue to invite replication (what Anderson calls the "modular character of
nationalism") or is it open to contestation and/or co-optation by other ideological forms?Since the publication of Anderson's text, the term "imagined communities" has
been appropriated by many critics, often not entirely on Anderson's own terms, to
emphasize the active, creative and affective process by which people come to view
themselves as subjects of a nation. This process is moreover shown to be always mediated
by language, through literary and popular cultural productions and "civil" institutions
such as the school and the family. Yet, despite its suggestive title, Anderson's text
primarily delineates the objective conditions of possibility under which the nation became
imaginable as a dominant form of political organization in the modern world. These
conditions-the rise of print capitalism and the creation of unified fields of exchange and
communication, which resulted in languages-of-power which are capable of assimilating
dialects and non-standard linguistic forms-are carefully contextualized in two centuries of
global historical development, and shown to be the motor for specific social change and
particular transformations in consciousness. As Partha Chatterjee points out, Anderson
does not in fact give much credence to the work of the imagination, confining his
discussion "to the 'modular' character of 20th century nationalisms, without noticing
the twists and turns, the suppressed possibilities, the contradictions still unresolved"
(22). Chatterjee's own study thus privileges the complex ambiguities and contradictions
between the claims of the doctrine of nationalism on the one hand, and the justificatory
structure of those claims on the other. Chatterjee understands Third World nationalism to
be a "derivative" discourse (rather than the replication and adaptation of earlier models)
which actively negotiates with European thought. However, Chatterjee limits his
understanding of the imagination to the intellectual process of creation. His exclusive
focus on elite intellectual thought elides Anderson's interest in the populist workings of
nationalism. What evidently fascinates Anderson but has been left undeveloped in his text
is the affective power of nationalism to hail people in its name at the grassroots level:
... I have tried to delineate the processes by which the nation came to be imagined, and,
once imagined, modeled, adapted and transformed. Such an analysis has necessarily been
concerned primarily with social change or transformed consciousness. But it is doubtful
whether either social change or transformed consciousness do much to explain the
attachment that people feel for the inventions of their imaginations-or, to revive a question
raised at the beginning of the text-why people are ready to die for these inventions (129).
For literary and cultural critics, such "attachment" is perhaps best understood
through a notion of ideology as institutionalized systems of representations. For this
purpose, it is instructive to supplement this opening in Anderson's text with Etienne
Balibar's analytical framework. Balibar applies and modifies Althusser's famous
formulation of ideology to analyze the nation as an "ideological form." This formulation
is suggestive in several ways.
First, it proffers a more complex relation between the imaginative process of the
individual subject and the role of the state. It exposes the (often invisible) forces of
coercion which stand silently "in the wings" of even the most populist and democratic
rhetoric of nationalism. Anderson discusses the state most forcefully in his formulation of
"official nationalism" as a "willed merger of nation and dynastic empire." It was
developed in reaction to the popular national movements in Europe since the 1820s (83),
and became itself an unsavory model later copied by 20th century Third World nationalist
movements (102). "Official nationalism" thus exploits the democratic appeal of popular
nationalism and diverts its sentiments to serve the interests of the state. Anderson's
argument here invokes the "Janus-faced" ambivalence Tom Nairn attributes to
nationalism (Nairn 348-9). There is a reactionary and a progressive potential in
nationalism, and the two are at odds with each other. In Balibar's scheme, however, the
state is the projected "destiny" of any nationalism. Its function is complimentary, not in
antagonism, to the democratic rhetoric of nationalism. Posed in Althusser's terms, the
Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) functions by coercion while the Ideological State
Apparatus (ISA) functions by ideology. Even as the ISA works through consent and
persuasion (appealing to people's "attachment" to their national community), the RSA
provides the final limits, in the form of punitive measures (eg. interdiction against treason,
immigration acts). The very existence of the RSA, however "naturalized" through
ideology, suggests the vulnerability of nationalism. It does not always appeal to its
subjects, and the state must be prepared to resort to coercion when it fails.
Second, precisely because of this vulnerability, the interpellation of a national
subject-even under propitious objective conditions whereby the nation as a community is
eminently imaginable-is never coherent or harmonious. Balibar illustrates this point in his
discussion of "fictive ethnicity"-"the community instituted by the nation-state"
(96). The constitution of "fictive ethnicity" depends on two major elements: a sense of
community forged respectively by language and race. Balibar's analysis of the rhetoric of
the language community is very close to Anderson's:
All linguistic practices feed into a single "love of the language" which is addressed
not to the textbook norm nor to particular usage, but to the "mother tongue"-that is, to
the ideal of a common origin projected back beyond learning processes and specialist
usage, and which, by that very fact, becomes the metaphor for the love fellow nationals
feel for one another (Balibar 98).
For Balibar as well as for Anderson, there is a potential openness to the language
community. After all, language can be acquired by anyone who has the time and will to
learn. It is an openness constrained only by human mortality (Anderson 133). For Balibar,
however, this openness is precisely what renders the rhetoric of a language community
insufficient for the production of "fictive ethnicity." It is too open "to be tied down to
the frontiers of a particular people" and hence needs to be supplemented by "a principle
of closure, of exclusion" (Balibar 99). This "principle of closure" finds expression in
the rhetoric of race. Anderson argues that racism is rooted in the ideology of class rather
than nation, because it "erases nation-ness" by reducing someone to his or her biology
(Anderson 135). In Balibar's formulation, such erasure actually contributes to the
production of "fictive ethnicity":
... the race community ... ethinicizes the social difference which is an expression of
irreconcilable antagonisms by lending it the form of a division between the "genuinely"
and the "falsely" national (100).
The democratic appeal of nationalism as a community which is in principle open to
newcomers (what Anderson locates in the principle, if not reality, of "naturalization") is
often at odds with the actual interests of the state. Balibar shows how the rhetoric of a race
community rationalizes this contradiction by distinguishing between different levels of
authenticity in bona fide national citizens. There is, however, a fundamental contradiction
between these two complementary discourses, as they are actually based on mutually
exclusive premises. The language community is defined by environment, whereas the race
community is defined by blood. They are also susceptible to continuous disruption, as they
cannot readily account for cases such as bilinguality and miscegenation (Balibar 103).
Anderson's emphasis on the power of nationalism to continually adapt itself to new
situations-such as the revolution in communications and information technology-
because it has become such an "overwhelming norm" (Anderson 123) suggests a
certain inevitability to the hegemonic status of nationalism. By showing the vulnerability of
nationalism, and the gaps and fissures in its discourse, Balibar reminds us of the daily
ways in which people often struggle to come to terms with-and at times to rebel against-
what is essentially an incoherent and contradictory ideology, however naturalized it seems
most of the time:Every "people," which is the product of a national process of ethnicization, is forced
today to find its own means of going beyond exclusivism or identitarian ideology in the
world of transnational communications and global relations of force. Or rather, every
individual is compelled to find in the transformation of the imaginary of "his" or
"her" people the means to leave it, in order to communicate with the individuals of other
peoples with which he or she shares the same interests and, to some extent, the same future
(Balibar 105).Finally, Balibar's consideration of the institutions of the school and the family as
sites of interpellation reminds us that ideology works most fundamentally in the private
sphere and in quotidian situations. The study of the private as sites of power has been
pioneered by feminists working across the disciplines. The recent efforts of feminist
scholars such as Kumina Jayawardena, Chandra Mohanty, Inderpal Grewal and Ann
McClintock, amongst others, have demonstrated the profoundly gendered nature of
nationalist discourse, as well as its dependence on normative notions of sexuality. In light
of this important theoretical development, it becomes clear that the image of the heroic
soldier who lays down his life to defend the honor and purity of his country (Anderson 17,
132-4) appeals directly to normative expectations of masculinity, femininity and
heterosexual love. The sacrificial love and "moral grandeur" inspired by nationalism
(131) which so fascinates Anderson, and which he attributes in part to nationalism's
prefiguration in religious communities, can be analyzed in much greater depth if attention is
paid to issues of gender and sexuality.I point to these openings in Anderson's model to highlight the vulnerability of
nationalist discourses, and argue for the need to give credence to instances when the
"imagined community" does not quite cohere, when there is a necessity to obscure,
mask and justify its incoherence, or resort to violence. As a literary and cultural critic, I am
most interested in how cultural productions negotiate these fissures in ideology. Pierre
Macherey has argued that the literary text, by endowing ideology with a specific form,
becomes "the mirror effect which exposes its insufficiency, revealing differences and
discordances, or a significant incongruity" (133). This is not a mirror reflection which
gives a one-to-one correspondence. It extends the world but also "seizes, inflates and
tears" this world until its objects become "lacerated, incomplete, broken" (135).
Macherey refers to the literary text specifically, but the metaphor of the mirror is
particularly suitable for thinking about film. Mainstream cinema functions exactly like the
opposite of the "mirror effect" which Macherey attributes to literature. As Annette Kuhn
points out, "a film simply seems to be 'there' as it unfolds before our eyes" (52),
thereby erasing all signs of illusion and disjuncture which constitute the film as film.
Ideology works precisely like this: to erase all signs of itself as ideology so that it appears
simply to be "there," naturalized and unchangeable, "just the way things are." A
cinema which subverts the conventions of mainstream cinema and its illusion of seamless
reality often produces, quite literally (i.e. visually), the distorting mirror effect that
Macherey describes. The "new Hong Kong cinema" which emerged in the mid-80s
when Hong Kong had entered into its postcolonial "transition" find new cinematic
expression in such subversively "distorting" images. This cinema is particularly
pertinent to the context of this paper because it is an interesting, and atypical, example of a
cultural negotiation with nationalism.
The immediate context of this negotiation is Hong Kong's condition-or rather,
predicament-of postcoloniality. Unlike the typical trajectory delineated in postcolonial
studies-the primary model of which is based on the anti-imperialist liberation movements
in Africa and Asia during the 50s and 60s, whereby national independence was won after a
protracted revolutionary struggle which involved grassroots participation-Hong Kong's
postcoloniality is being dictated from above, and negotiated between two governments,
with very little direct representation from the people who live in Hong Kong. It also does
not coincide with national independence. Instead of coming into a new national identity,
postcolonial Hong Kong is written into China's nationalist narrative. The resumption of
sovereignty over Hong Kong is narrated as a "restoration" of the nation's rightful
boundary, which had been disturbed by the "shameful" history of subjugation under
European and Japanese imperialism. Because there is no pre-colonial history to Hong
Kong except as an insignificant part of the Chinese nation, this nationalist narrative actually
threatens to erase "Hong Kong" as a distinct political, economic or cultural entity. The
"last resort" of force is explicitly emphasized by Deng Xiaoping's memorable quip to
Margaret Thatcher in 1982, that China would unilaterally take back Hong Kong lock, stock
and barrel, with or without the co-operation of Britain and-more importantly-with or
without the consent of, or consultation with, the people who live in Hong Kong. The
subsequent rounds of volatile negotiations were conducted between Britain and the PRC,
without any independent and representative Hong Kong presence (Van Kemenade 54-102).
During this period, cultural production in Hong Kong-of which the cinema is arguably
the most important form-is characterized by what Ackbar Abbas calls a concern with
"the space of disappearance" (7). It is permeated with an anxiety that the "Hong Kong
way of life" is going to disappear, and that the future is uncertain and not quite
imaginable. Exacerbating this milieu are huge waves of immigration out of Hong Kong into
flourishing new immigrant enclaves in Canada and Australia. The more privileged of these
immigrants are those who retain their mobility, and possess what Aihwa Ong calls
"flexible citizenship" (750). These are people who can shuttle back and forth, and hold
no fixed allegiance to either their home or immigrant place. This situation further
contributes to a general sense of dislocation not only for those who are privileged enough
to move around, but also-in fact, especially-for those less privileged and less mobile,
who are stuck, either back in Hong Kong or in their immigrant location. Under these
conditions, the "nation" is unimaginable as a community, because its parameters are
being imposed without consent. All the affective values associated with community, such
as stability, lasting bonds, sense of belonging, are being disrupted, rather than fostered, by
the nationalist narrative.
A brief comparison of Hong Kong cinema with films made in the same period, by
the "Fifth Generation" directors from the PRC would illustrate their different
relationship to nationalism. Films by Mainland directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen
Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang are "nationalist allegories" in the most straightforward
sense. Their films are highly critical of the Chinese nation-state but their critique is couched
in thoroughly nationalist terms. The nation itself is never called into question, only the
means by which to make it a better community. Chen Kaige's 1992 film Farewell My
Concubine (Bawang bieji) offers the clearest example. The film is a fierce indictment of the
cycles of violence which recur under different political regimes in China in the 20th
century. The vehicle of its critique is the tragic story of a Beijing opera diva Cheng Dieyi,
who has been exploited and betrayed by men of power in the Qing, Japanese, Nationalist
and Communist governments. His feminized and queer body has repeatedly been violated
and aestheticized into a spectacle for consumption. The film offers a brilliant critique of the
gendered and sexualized violence of authoritarian states, and the recalcitrant ideology
(symbolized by the titular opera) which naturalizes such violence. Yet, the film itself
deploys femininity and queerness in a disturbingly similar way. Cheng Dieyi's tragedy is
attributed to his femininity. The operatic role which makes him famous is a figure of
feminine virtue and sacrifice which he acts on stage and re-enacts in real life. It is also
attributed to his queerness. His unrequited, undying love for his stage-brother and fellow
performer is the source of his worst sufferings. Cheng's sacrificial femininity and
melancholic queerness is constructed in the film as a symbol for the violated nation. The
implication is troubling. Symbolized by a person, the nation acquires an anthropologized
integrity. Like life itself, the nation just is. How it comes to be is not called into question.
And if the nation were to come out of this cycle of violence, does it have to, in symbolic
terms, become masculine and straight? Not only is the nation as such taken for granted, the
reinscription of femininity and queerness as tragic is also unwittingly complicit with the
ideology the film sets out to critique.
By contrast, the "nation" is never taken for granted in Hong Kong films. Even
community itself is a precarious notion. The most suggestive films of the "transitional"
period, by directors such as Clara Law, Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan, Wong Kar-Wai and Fruit
Chan, are all in implicit negotiation with the postcolonial predicament, and the sense of
dislocation and anxiety created in its wake. However, these films do not offer a social and
political critique in the grand allegorical tradition of Fifth Generation films. Rather, they
work within established commercial genres, such as romantic comedies, tragedies and triad
epics. While most mainstream genre films placate the dominant sense of dislocation and
anxiety by creating a fictional sense of community in the form of family, underworld
fraternity and romantic love-though not always without irony or at least uneasiness-
these films offer a more complex formulation by invoking the desire for community while
frustrating its realization in film. Amongst all the directors mentioned, Wong Kar-Wai is
perhaps the most idiosyncratic and experimental. His 1997 film, "Happy Together"
(Chun'guang zha xie; literally "A sudden glimpse of spring") is a one of the best
examples of the "new Hong Kong cinema."
Departing from the signature style of Wong's previous films, all of which tell an
intricate web of stories, jump-cutting between the lives of an array of tangentially linked
characters, the plot of "Happy Together" is extremely simple and involves only three
men. The lead characters Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and Ho Po-Wing (Leslie
Cheung Kwok-Wing) belong to the lumpen class of disaffected, street-wise hustlers in
Hong Kong. They are gay lovers who are travelling in Argentina to jump-start their on-
again-off-again relationship. Ho has bought a cheap souvenir lampshade with a picture of
the Iguazu Falls imprinted on it. Captured by the image of a couple standing intimately
together underneath the waterfall, they set out to look for the real place. They end up
"losing their way" and breaking up with each other on a Pantagonian highway. Having
spent all their money, they become stranded in Buenos Aires. Lai Yiu-Fai works first as a
doorman at a tango bar, then as a cook in a Chinese restaurant, and later as a help in an
abbatoir, desperately trying to save money to go back to Hong Kong. Ho Po-Wing hustles
white men for a living, getting into trouble from time to time. The two men spend a brief
period of time "starting over" when Lai Yiu-Fai takes care of Ho Po-Wing after he has
been badly beaten up by a john. Their constant bickering and jealous suspicions are
punctuated by brief and abrupt scenes of genuine tenderness and playful eroticism, but the
relationship ends again in a bitter and violent break-up. Meanwhile, Lai Yiu-Fai has
befriended a Taiwanese boy Xiao Zhang (Chang Chen), who works with him at the
restaurant. Xiao Zhang wants to travel to "the end of the world" and eventually makes
his way to Ushuaia, where he stands in front of the last lighthouse on the South American
continent north of the South Pole. There, when he is "furthest away from home," he
decides to ends his wanderings and return to Taipei. Towards the end, Lai has also saved
up enough money to go back to Hong Kong. Before he leaves Buenos Aires, he goes on
another trip to look for Iguazu. He reaches the waterfall this time, but finds himself
standing under it alone. The film ends on the day Deng Xiaoping's death is announced,
while Lai Yiu-Fai spends a night in transit in Taipei before he returns to Hong Kong.
The plot of the film does not amount to much more than the cyclical trajectory of a
destructive love relationship. The quotidian details of the petty quarrels and manipulative
mind games between the lovers are painfully tedious, and filmed accordingly in grainy
black-and-white. The oppressive mood of the film is lifted abruptly and momentarily by
several astonishingly beautiful scenes, of which I will say more later. What gives the film
its critical edge are subtle but incisive visual links which extend the dark milieu of the failed
relationship metonymically to the social and political milieu of Hong Kong on the brink of
the handover.
First, the film opens with a close-up shot of the lovers' passports being stamped
by Argentinean immigrant officials. These "British National (Overseas)" (BNO)
passports provide Hong Kong citizens-who will no longer qualify for the "British
Dependent Territory Citizen" status in 1997, but who also do not qualify for Chinese
citizenship-with a national status. They are nicknamed "British NO-rights" passports
because they do not confer the right of abode in Britain. What exactly is a "national
(overseas)"? Where is the "nation" for this "national"? Opening the film with this
shot inscribes the two characters into a narrative of "nationality," but it is one which is
not attached to any viable "imagined community." It extends the personal drama of two
people-lost and stuck, who desire but fail to sustain a relational bond-to a larger political
drama which fosters a similar milieu of dislocation and alienation.
Second, the city of Buenos Aires, where most of the film's action takes place is
also metonymically linked to Hong Kong. One of the popular jokes made about the film at
the time of its release was that Wong Kar-Wai ran all the way to Buenos Aires to "get
away from 1997" and to re-create the atmosphere of the works of his favorite novelist
Manual Puig, but the film ends up with the exact same tone and mood of the films he shot
in Hong Kong. The gritty city streets, narrow corridors, crowded bars and seedy motel
rooms provide the same urban aesthetic whether they are filmed in Hong Kong or half way
across the globe from it. This is thus a mood not tied to the physical locale of Hong Kong,
the image of which has been erased altogether from the film, except in one peculiar
sequence. Sitting in his room watching TV, Lai Yiu-Fai suddenly realizes that Hong Kong
is "on the other side of the globe" from Argentina. We then see a slowly moving,
upside down shot of a flyover in Hong Kong, accompanied by a weather broadcast on the
soundtrack. This scene is a fantasy of the migrant, who tries to visualize "home" as
though it exists on the flat surface of a map: Hong Kong can only be seen upside down
when viewed from "down under" in South America. The film shows that the migrant,
though outside of Hong Kong, is still part and parcel of its predicament. The cultural space
of dislocation, ennui and alienation encompasses not only those who live or can return to
Hong Kong, but also the vast number who have left, and have no means to return. Buenos
Aires is represented not as an "Argentinean" city-no more than Hong Kong is a
"British" or "Chinese" city-but simply as a city, with all the properties that Iris
Marion Young theorizes as the antithesis to community. Young's model is based on the
fantasy of an "unoppressed city," defined as "an openness to unassimilated
difference," which Young privileges over the illusions of face-to-face intimacy of
community (Young 252-3). In Wong's films, the city is imagined precisely as an
antithesis to community, but without the material premise of primary equality and the
abundance of resources assumed by Young (Young 251). The "freedom" of
rootlessness cannot compensate for the loss of (the fiction of) community, which is most
fervently desired when its realization is least possible.
Third, the film ends with Lai Yiu-Fai's stop-over in Taipei, on the day that the
death of Deng Xiaoping is announced. Deng's death marks the closing of an era-the
post-Mao regime which fully incorporates the PRC into global capitalism. Deng was also
the engineer behind "One Country, Two Systems," a notion originally intended for
solving the Taiwan question, but which became the blueprint for the future governance of
Hong Kong. Ending the film in Taiwan, not Hong Kong, continues to extend the story of
the lovers, not only to the postcolonial predicament of Hong Kong, but even further to the
open question of Taiwan. Lai Yiu-Fai does not find Xiao Zhang in Taipei, but accidentally
stops by the noodle stall owned by Zhang's parents at the Liaoning night market. He
spots a photograph of Xiao Zhang standing in front of the lighthouse, and steals it when he
leaves. His closing voice-over narration says, "If I want to find him in the future, at least
I'll know where to look." Lai is implicitly comparing Xiao Zhang's sense of
belonging to the flightiness of Ho Po-Wing, who is rooted "nowhere" and cannot be
counted on to stick around. Xiao Zhang's sense of belonging is tied to his family, but
also implicitly to Taiwan, which has a much stronger-if no less problematic and anxiety-
ridden-political identity than Hong Kong (Van Kemenade 103-38). The closing image
shows Taipei's express rail in rapid motion, accompanied by Danny Chung's energetic
rendition of the Turtles tune "Happy Together." This ending jars with the predominant
mood of the film. Is it a projected hope for the future? Or an ironic comment on the rest of
the film, in which being "happy together" is unimaginable, either on the level of the
individual (for the lovers) or the nation (for Hong Kong and Taiwan ... one could also add
Tibet and Xinjiang-the parts of the PRC which do not belong "happily together" with
the nation)?
The film's pervasive mood of tedium is relieved occasionally by lyrical and
visually stunning incidental scenes, in which love and tenderness are expressed between
the otherwise emotionally estranged lovers. They represent moments of possible
community. However, the editing does not allow these scenes to be diegetically connected
to the main narrative. For example, the celebrated "tango in the kitchen" scene is the
most beautifully shot, tender and erotic scene in the whole film. It is inserted in a sequence
starting with a scene in Ho is teaching Lai the tango in Lai's little bedroom. Ho is short of
patience and the two bicker away in their usual fashion. As Astor Piazzola's "Milonga
For Three" starts on the soundtrack, the camera cuts to a static "empty shot" of an
unknown street by a peer. The primary lighting of the scene produces a pale blue-gray cast,
but two metal buckets and a strip of tape held up as a barrier have been colorized to an
intense orange. The mood is serene and lyrical and the touch of bright orange gleams
cheerfully. Vague sounds of seagulls and water are heard over the haunting music. The
camera then cuts to the dirty little kitchen in Lai's boarding house. This scene is filmed on
a flatter, less saturated film stock, which is pushed so much for "high key" colors and
lighting that the visual effect is a bleached, exposed, trance-like lighting. Only medium
shots are used, so we never see any close-up expressions, even though the scene is staged
precisely to arouse our desire for just such close-ups. The stylized, disciplined and
energetic Argentinean tango is here danced languidly and playfully. Lai and Ho are
uncharacteristically tender and intimate with each other. Lai Yiu-Fai's usually taut and
tense body looks astonishingly supple and softened in Ho's arms, while Ho Po-Wing's
habitual wise-cracking, nonchalant demeanor is replaced by an expression of warmth and
fulfillment. The so-called "empty shot" is conventionally used to establish the location
for a subsequent scene. In this sequence, however, it is used to establish not physical but
emotional location. It is not clear where the street by the port is, only that it is visually and
emotionally very different from the Buenos Aires in the rest of the film. It prefigures the
serenity and lyricism of the tango scene which follows. The situation in the dance scene
does not follow from the previous narrative thread. The characters look and behave with
each other differently than in the rest of the film. They are even wearing clothes that we
never see them wear at any other time in the film! Is it a flashback? A dream sequence? A
fantasy? Or a sudden outburst of genuine feelings? The relation of this scene to the rest of
the film is left deliberately unclear. It is edited in to create a jarring breath of fresh air (the
unexpected "glimpse of spring" in the Chinese title). It hooks the viewers into desiring
for more, then it is abruptly cut off and we return again to the oppressive ennui of the city
and the failing relationship. This scene functions like the image of the couple under the
Iguazu Falls on Ho Po-Wing's lampshade. It holds a promise of intimacy, of being
"happy together," but its fruition remains elusive. It is out of time and out of tune with
the rest of the narrative.
The sexual politics surrounding the film is also symptomatic of Hong Kong's
postcolonial predicament. At the film's international arthouse release, it appears to some
critics to be a little too "chaste," not quite queer and radical enough by the standards of
the "new queer cinema" of, say, Derek Jarman, Lizzie Borden or Issac Julien. The
director and the actors have all claimed in public that "Happy Together" is not a "queer
film," but a film about love in general. Such a characterization also falls short of the
expectations of a radical identity politics associated with independent queer cinema.
However, there is an important upshot to the film's refusal to construct queerness as
such. In "Happy Together," there is no heterosexual context to the lead characters'
life. Thus, within the diegesis of the film, their love is not "queer" in the sense that it is
not shown to exist relationally to a dominant world of compulsory heterosexuality. Unlike
Farewell My Concubine, queerness does not have any symbolic value. It is not open to
assimilation by the nationalist narrative. Wong has admitted that he made the film partly
because he wasn't sure if he could make the same film after 1997, given the conservative
attitude regarding sexuality in the PRC. The production of the film is thus motivated by an
anxiety that it will itself face the prospect of disappearance.I use the case of Hong Kong cinema to illustrate the dynamics of cultural
production at a moment when the ideology of nationalism is at its weakest. Despite Deng
Xiaoping's threat of the use of force, there were also attempts to hail people-who have
hitherto primarily identified with the "territory" of Hong Kong-into the "imagined
community" of China. For instance, the big-budget epic film "Opium War," which
was released with much fanfare in 1997, reclaims Hong Kong as part of the nationalist
narrative by dramatizing the historical circumstances of its colonization by Britain, and the
glorious occasion of its "return" to the motherland. However, despite these efforts, the
nation is not quite imaginable as a community in Hong Kong, when community itself-the
"deep horizontal comradeship" (Anderson 16)-cannot be conceived of except in deeply
fractured and alienated terms. This milieu is more generally symptomatic of a tension which
arises out of the global forces of economic restructuring. The Chinese government is torn
between an uncompromising and militant nationalism which claims Hong Kong, Macau
and Taiwan on the basis of historical territorial integrity, and the demand for a more flexible
recognition of a "transnational" Chinese network to ensure more rapid circulation and
maximum accumulation of capital (Ong and Nonini 3-36). Caught between this tension are
the majority of people "claimed" by the nation who are neither rooted nor mobile. They
are caught between the untenable longing for community and the all-too-real experience of
fragmentation and alienation. Films like "Happy Together" capture the tone and mood
of this dilemma, while refusing to offer a fictional solution to placate the anxiety. All it
offers are flashes of the (as yet) impossible: the abrupt glimpses of spring, the moments of
being "happy together," which cannot be assimilated into any existent narratives of
community, including that of the nation.
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