Modern city life and city's relations in Chungking Express

In the recent decades of the development of Hong Kong Cinema, especially in the time of Hong Kong New Wave, there are really number representable Hong Kong filmmakers. Wong Kai-wai, being one of the late Hong Kong New Wave filmmaker, is famous and popular in his works with post-modern features. One of his romantic comedy genre work - Chungking Express, is noted in expressing the urban cityscape of Hong Kong, particular in the place of Tsimshatsui and Central. Similar to Wong's previous films, the expressing of the themes and motifs of time, love, lost and searching for self-identification. These elements enable Chungking Express to give a good picture of protagonists' frustration and loneliness in Hong Kong to the audience. In this essay, I will start from the modern urbanscape sitting in Hong Kong, and try to figure out the modern city life style in relating to time and memory. Further, I would try to focus on the inter-personal relations inside the geographical identity of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong as a globalized and fast-changing city

Hong Kong has been a city with intense globalization of economy and a consuming city with tons of various developments under global economy. In 2008, Hong Kong was being classified as an Alpha World Cities +[1](or global city). Under the concept of globalization, this included the aspects of cultural, economy and some other. Taking the Tsimshatsui and Central in Chungking Express as examples, these two places are famous for being a tourist place and shopping. In this sense, these two places are exposed highly in a multicultural environment and economic globalization. However, in many common tourism places, what can be seen are only shopping malls with international brands. This gives the question of how Hong Kong has been changed under globalization. Yes, globalization of economy is an irresistible trend. At the same time, the form of local culture is being homogenized with money economy. The signs are the only representation of lots of commercial product. It looks like to carry on the long standing myth about the only opportunity in Hong Kong is to make money and commercialization, since the idea during 70s economic bloom. Everyone is only looking for short lifetime commodities, which can be replaced with a new one quickly. In this concept of consumerism, things not lasting long have became a metaphor of finishing and expiring. According to the short lifetime, naturally the end-user's memory will not be profound. In this sense, we can firstly have the idea and established the relationship between the globalized and fast-changing city with time and memory.
Chungking Express plays an important motif of the importance of time by Wong which is familiar with some other Wong's films like Days of being Wild and In the Mood for Love. It is noticeable in the number of hand-held shots appeared throughout the first story of the film. Those hand-held camera shots are particularly using slow shutter speed give the blurring, specially showing the motion blur. This shows the city moving speed with the film language. Further, cop #223 monologues specify the exact time about the future: 57 hours later, I will start to love this woman, and 6 hours later, she will love one other man. Together with the expiry date of the canned food and the showing of the same clock with different time, all these try to signify the bounding by time of the protagonists. With the fast city speed and the bounding by time, these all show the allegorical picture when compared with the fascinated modern city life.

Relating splendid appearance and decadence

Hong Kong is a centre of hybrid culture melting pot and express apparently with glorious and glamorous sign, but this is only showing the glamorous side of decadence. I take cultures and ideologies expressed in the "Americanized way" as an example. In Chungking Express, lots of American commodities and cultures can be seen. Take the example of Del Monte canned food, the pineapple cans appear in the first story brought by cop #223 He Qiwu, and the numbers of tomato sardine by cop # 663. Similarly, Coca-cola, United Airline, and the famous songs from 70s, for instance, California Dreamin' also appeared in the film. All we can see are the life of American style. When dealing with consumerism, usually one famous consuming country example will be America. As illustrated in Chungking Express, this form of consuming culture has been deep root in Hong Kong as being a melting pot. As the dominance of the external cultures, local culture has been put into a marginalized place. This is because the economic development became the major factor in driving the development of culture. Loss, loneliness and frustration are things being characterized for the protagonists in Chungking Express. Here, the idea of "decadence" can be found in relating the modernity and the loneliness and frustration. In the publication of Five Face of Modernity by Matei Calinescu, Calinescu pointed out the origin of decadence, which is from a Greek noun - decadentia. The original meaning of decadentia is the destructiveness by time and the fatality of decline. Through the explaining from the origin, Calinescu interpreted decadence with the meaning of time caused destruction and the power of rotten and deprave in the philosophy of ancient Greek and ancient Rome. According to Calinescu, his analysis focused deeply on the relationship between decadence and modernity. In which, he point out the rebelling and resentment by contemporary literature and artist toward the fantasy of modern technology. They argued that the modern technology is only the self-deception mirage in order to cover up the degrading interpersonal relationship. Then, civilization, technology and progress become a negative term in various forms of literature in demonstrating: progress is decadence and decadence is progress.
To compare progress and globalization trend of economic development, we can see the close similarities between the two. As stated prior, the pace of changing of commodities under commercialization will be extremely fast. As suggested by the essay of George Simmel: The Metropolis and Mental Life, the emotional life is being intensified by the swift and the continuous shifting of external and internal stimuli. Such kinds of stimuli include the splendid presentation of commodities. If sensation and rationality are under comparison, rationality is more likely to be accepted since the reasoning behind. It turns out to conclude sensation is not reliable when compared with rationality in order to get rid of the over stimulated environment. With such reasoning kind of reasoning and rationality, it is likely the choice of rationality is in a form of progress, just like technology in the form of progress. This form of rational behaviour can be discovered when cop #223 asked the worker in the convenience store about canned pineapple. Then the workers told # 223 that the convenience store will not sale those products very near expiry date. Beside, this scene on canned pineapple, there are still more ideas on rational choice in the second stories about the choice of boyfriend and also the choice of night snakes. By these reasonable and rational choices, the removal of emotion will be reflecting the removal of personalities. Such kind of removal of personalities can easily found in the business of the money economy. The choice of people can be said to be quantized as well as the emotion since emotions are likely to be neglected. In this sense, quantization also applied to personality and reaction that should be commonly considered as something unpredictable. For this reason, the memory economy city like Hong Kong, people with modern life style will turn into the mind of calculation.

Over stimulating and memory trauma

In addition, Simmel pointed out the blasé attitude in case like mental dullness caused by the over stimulation.
They appear to the blasé person in a homogeneous, flat and grey color with no one of them worthy of being preferred to another. This psychic mood is the correct subjective reflection of a complete money economy to the extent that money takes the place of all the manifoldness of things and expresses all qualitative distinctions between them in the distinction of "how much."
Over stimulating will related to the memory trauma. The cop #663 has been a good example in memory trauma. #663 has been abandoned by the flight attendant since the flight attendant is having more choices in hosing a boyfriend. #663 refused to receive the letter from the flight attendant as the escaping from the truth of being abandoned. Interestingly, the illustration of trauma was being signified using the injury caused by a hobnail just like the clipping of the letter on the notice board. Later when the camera focused on the daily life of # 663, Wong Kar-wai tried to present #663 in monologue with the commodities inside the house. This is a consistence referral to Wong's commonly used monologic style of dialogue, while this also appeared in the first story when #223 expresses himself. Then the most important signifier will be the dullness of #663 in detecting the changes inside his house. He explained this sense as the change of seasons, but this can be seen as the recovering from the trauma and the adaptation to the further changes.

Expiring inter-personal relationship

Chungking Express is pointing out the vague and fragile inter-personal relationship for the protagonists. As using the same motif of expiry date and as memory trauma, the disappointment in love affairs of cop #223 motivate him to buy one canned pineapple each day which will expire on the first of May. For the whole month, he tried to give himself a deadline to get rid of "May". On the first of May, he knew his girlfriend will have no possibility to return, and then #223 decided to eat all the expired canned pineapple. As stated prior, the canned foods give the expiry date also for human relationship just like the given canned sardine for the blonde killer in the first story. Together with the using of escalator in the both two stories, these have shown the short, and transience for peoples' communication. The spatial configurations of the film further show the loneliness after such vague peoples' relationship. In the first story, while #223 was eating the canned pineapple, #223 was placed in between the two walls with the particular camera position. Further in the second story, while #663 was buying a cup of black coffee after his disappointment from his girlfriend, two walls were also used to create a frame in the composition of the picture in the film. This spatial configuration of the picture promotes the trapping for loneliness and as an allegorical signifier to the floating glamorous side of the city.
In contrast with the vague relationship in the love affairs, Wong has used the buyer and seller relationship in confronting this vagueness. The shopper of the Midnight Express showed a reversing friendliness when compared with the calculating mind in money economy. The shopper keeper, indeed, was trying to promote more snacks to the customers through their in-depth conversation with #223 and #663. Further, the shop keeper is in fact related to his customers more than buyer and seller relationship. In fact, their relationship is more like friends relationship since the causal chatting about the love affairs of #223 and #663. With this, this may be what Wong thinks of the way to resist the calculating mind of money economy.

Conclude with self-identification

In the earlier, I have mentioned the globalization of economy in the fastening of time, and the glamorous appearance side of the money economy. With the focus on the idea of decadence, I tried to convert the old idea of progress in relating to the new form money economy in order to deconstruct and interpret the different motifs in Chungking Express. Overall, Chungking Express showed the underneath truth out of the glamorous appearance. In which, those form of marginalized human relationships have put the collective memory and self-identity in danger. Oblivion of memory and transient time, these have been significantly destroying the collective memory in the constructing of personal identity. It seems the money is origin of all evils. Ironically, Wong may have given a new way of the self-identification for the going back to old, close relationship of business as a response of the current money economy. Yet, Wong has given a relatively good ending in both the two stories. I believe Wong is trying to put more attention for the city people in relating the peoples' relationship and self-identification to resist the corrupting times and echo for glamorous appearance.

Reference

Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life, On Individuality and Social Forms
Michelle Huang, Walking between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai
Peter Brunette, "Tears, Time, and Love: The Films of Wong Kar-wai",Wong kar-wai, Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2005, pp.45-57
Stephen Teo, Space-Time Tango: Chungking Express, Wong Kar-Wai, London : BFI Pub., 2005, pp47-64
洛楓：（被時間與歷史放逐的浪遊者：王家衛、頹廢與世紀末），《世紀末城市：香港的流行文化》，香港：牛津大學出版社，1995，頁37-59

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[1] "The World According to GaWC 2008". Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC). Loughborough University. 2008-05-07. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/world2008t.html.