The Mediated Metropolis: Anthropological Issues in Cities and Mass Communication Author(s): Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong and Gary

W. McDonogh Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 103, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 96-111 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/683924 Accessed: 14/03/2010 00:52
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CINDY HING-YUK WONG

Media Culture College of StatenIsland/CityUniversityof New York New York, NY 10314 W. MCDONOGH GARY of Cities Growthand Structure Bryn MawrCollege Bryn Mawr,PA 19010-2899

The MediatedMetropolis: Issuesin Citiesand Mass Communication Anthropological

and othervisual mass media have found niches in the dense creativityof Cinema,radio,television, video, the Internet, andcultural encounters worldwide.Yet, withoutcities whereproducsocial urban life, altering practices twentieth-century This symand lackhumanfoundations. massproduction, ers andaudienceshave congregated, texts,distribution, reception this from within urban histories. We illustrate of media concrete biosis demandscarefulethnographic analysis approach for clues to workwith film andviewershipin two cities. Hong Kong has gainedglobalfame for its films, often scrutinized define a changingcity. its identity;we examine how moviegoing itself and the contexts of transnational spectatorship film it is useful to contrast the andreadingof controlled its images;here, production Philadelphia, by contrast,has rarely media that speakto urbansocial issues. In both visual images aboutthe city with images producedthroughnarrowcast and creativityin local andglobal frameworks. cases, urbanvisual cultureshighlightcontestation [film,grassrootsmedia, urbanimagery,Hong Kong,Philadelphia]

he visual culture of cities, whether mediated through mass production of film and television or embodied in vernacular structures of architecture and murals, represents a central formative feature of the lives and identities of contemporary citizens. While questions of film and the city have come to be associated with communication and cultural studies (Clarke 1992; Donald 1999; Gandini 1994; Lamster 2000), they also are central to anthropological inquiry. In fact, as Sara Dickey has noted in her 1997 review of anthropology and mass media, such analyses often demand ethnographic fieldwork and cultural analysis as fundamental aspects of communications research (see Spitulnik 1993). As we argue here, such interdisciplinary studies also illuminate contemporary urban life, divisions, and futures in both local and global dimensions. Consider the early cinematic memories of Yuen-ling, bor in the late 1950s in the fishing village of Shau Kei Wan (an area now fully incorporated into metropolitan Hong Kong): I saw movies ever since I can remember.I guess I started whenI was two yearsold or 2'/2.In ShauKei Wan,therewere threemovie houses.... Besides the good movies therewere all the tear-jerking Cantoneseoperas. T

And of course the food-all those exotic foods like water cockroaches(long sut), squid and char siu. I enjoyed my lunch in the movie house. Before my pre-schooltime, my I, everydayafter mommytook me to movies.... In Primary morningschool, my mommy would bring me to buy some movies ... hechar siu and we would go to see tear-jerking roic womenmovies.... In Shau Kei Wan, the movie house was all wooden with lots of sut (fleas). Wong Fei Hong was playing always, and lots of FanBo Bo. The secondone was GoldenStar.It sometimes had foreign languagefilms. Help. I saw Disney there. [interview1997] Hong Kong cinema, especially since the 1980s, has become known worldwide for its rapid choreography of action and imagery, its visions of a city of frantic energy and towering verticality, and its relation to a city caught between colonialism and returnto China. This recurrentstyle and urbanity has led filmmakers, critics, and citizens to search for metaphoric meanings in films from Tsui Hark's Wicked City (1992) or Ann Hui's Song of Exile (1990) to Fruit Chan's The Longest Summer (2000). Yet, such films never constituted the entire cinematographic universe of Hong Kong citizens nor were they isolated from social experiences of viewing and choice. For Yuen-ling, going to

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the movies was a significantandfrequent event, mingling films, foods, and community.This experience,in turn,reinforcedfamily and identity:"goingto the movies"was a centralsocial and culturalpracticeof post-WorldWar II Hong Kong. Highly local images and familiaractorsand plots (the endless swordsmansequels of Wong Fei Hung or theheritageof Cantoneseoperas)contrasted withHollywood's alternativefantasiesand the glamourof first-run movie palaces. Local and global intersectionsbecame clearer as Yuen-ling grew up, choosing first-runHollywood theatersin the entertainment center of Causeway art in films small houses or film festivals,andproducBay, tions that she has seen while living abroad.Meanwhile, theatersin Shau Kei Wan slowly have closed down. In Hong Kong,films not only evoke questionsof postmodern (Abbas1997),butalso style (Teo 1997) anddisappearance in worlds of departicipate receptionand appropriation fined by intersectionsbetween Chinese and colonials, neighborhoodand urban development,martialarts and Disney. Together, these reconstituteboth visual culture andhybridurban identities. Films also convey otherurbanmessages.As we drafted this essay in 1999, for example,TheSixthSense,whichoffered many scenes of Philadelphia, became the highestgrossingmovie in releaseworldwide,the numberone box office drawin Spain,France,and the UnitedKingdomas in the United States. While well as an Oscar-contender critics more often discussedits evocative story or turnto the supernatural thanthe setting,for thosein Greater Philaalso was a sense of recdelphia,viewing accompanied by local sites and citizens on the screen. ognition,of seeing Whilesome local criticslamented thatthe film looks like it in collaboration was produced withthe touristboard,other viewers identifiedwith "our streets,""our supermarket," or the historicallessons of the city's past that hauntthe film. This impactalso playedout on a widerscreen.Kevin Feeley, spokesmanfor mayorEd Rendell,noted, "Philaso beautifullyand with so many delphiais photographed to the see movie it can't help but help us" people coming Another (Brown1999). newspaper quoteda "new"out-oftownvisitoras testimonyto changingimagesandcommercial impacts:" 'I alwaysthought was a crimePhiladelphia hellridden,rat-infested, mayor-torching-a-neighborhood hole. But when you see a movie like TheSixthSense with its cosmopolitan settings, your image of Philadelphia changes.... Oh, I've seen Rocky, I've seen Trading he says. 'ButI was nevermotiPlaces, I've seen Witness,' vatedto come to Philadelphia untilI saw TheSixthSense'" 1999: Fl). (Rickey At the same time, the commitmentof the local writer/ to continueproducing M. Night Shyamalan, films director, in the area bolsters an urban culturalindustrythat has in $168 milliondollarssince 1992.Likeothercities brought film office workswithproducers worldwide, Philadelphia's

to makethe city an accessiblesettingwhether the resultis a touristic panorama, a post-apocalypticvision (Twelve Monkeys,1995), or the city disguised as Cincinnati(Beloved, 1998). The goal is continuingvisibility.Indeed,in late 2000, the PhiladelphiaInquirerproudlyreported on a locally born television star, Kim Delaney, slated for an ABC drama set in the city. As producer StevenBochco ex"It's Kim's That hometown. plained, putit in ourheadsto with.... It's cool a Eastern begin city. It's got age. It's got weather.It's got everythingthat'sgreataboutthe EastexIt's notNew York"(Shister ceptit's notbeenoverexposed. 2000: D8). Yet mainstream while they broadcastimproductions, agery,often overlookimages andissues crucialto citizens who find voice in narrowcast productions by publictelevision andcommunitygroups.These reframe the city in different imagery, issues, and audience. Such grassroots worksmay have limitedappealbecauseof genre(nonfiction films) or specificityof issues outside of theircity or butthey underscore the heterogeneous community, experiences of city andmediaas producers, text,andaudiences. It may seem perplexingto begin an analysisof massmediated urban visualculturewith social memories, political economicramifications, andglobal/localchoicesrather thanimagesthemselves.As ethnographers andstudentsof media,however,we arguethatholistic social andcultural of urbanvisual culturesrepresents a central interpretation to urban well as as a contribuchallenge anthropology key tion for the disciplineto make in interdisciplinary discussions. Visual representations of the city and of conflictive aspects of urban life have existed for millennia:maps, plans, paintings, architecture,ceramics, sculpture, and otherarts.They have been showcasedin museums,theaandrituals.In ters,andpublicspacesor in events,parades, fact, these have alreadybecome standard subjectsfor anand social historical In this arthropological investigation. our concerns lie with mass and ticle, primary popularvisual media,includingfilm, television,video, andnews that expand audiences,images, and interpretations-thecity observed,the city moving, the city seen synchronically acrossspace,the interactive city of websitesandmultimedia. Here, the disciplinestandsnear the thresholdof new andnew contributions to urban studies. analyticventures To explore this topic, we juxtaposework in two cities withdifferent of bothmediaandurbanism. Alexperiences neither the has of or New though centrality Hollywood York as global media producers,Hong Kong has been a intertwined with a stronglocal capitalfor film production that has within a framework of limited image developed As a colonialandpostcolonial self-determination. city that nonethelessbecame an economic powerhousein production, exchange, and consumption,its mass media offer shimmeringvisions of a hybrid society, as Turnerand in Hong Kong60s/90s: Designing Ngan have underscored

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once a globalindustrial Identity(1996). Philadelphia, powerhouse,has declinedin the late twentiethcentury.It also and a nationalmarket(with in a nation-state participates where reverberations) productiondecisions have global been shapedby a New York-Hollywoodaxis. No one in Philadelphia-auteur,production company,film office, or chain-can claimto controlthe city's film imdistribution age in the same way thatHong Kong producersand disdo for thatcity. HongKonghas a moredistinctlotributors forlocal cal identity,expressedin films primarily produced is one pointin andregionalAsian audiences; Philadelphia a largermarketof signs, products, andaudiences.Yet their of experiencesallow us to discuss a rangeof intersections cinemaandcity while recognizing otherperspectives yet to be explored.' While othercities mighthave been chosen to illustrate the same processes, these are also cities where we have in the producand participated lived, worked,researched, tion and receptionof images with an intimacythatallows us to explorebothfilm andthe city in holisticterms.We do not force parallel studies but, rather,use these cases to as comparecities in terms of creationand spectatorship of mass mediation. Both primaryexperiences examples, connectionsthroughmedia moreover,sharetransnational andcitizens.Thatis, Philadelphians have envisionedHong Kong throughglobal mass media(althoughwe only touch on Americanvisionsin ourreference to moregeneralreadings of The Worldof Suzie Wong [see McDonogh and Chinese, meanwhile,have Wong in press]). Philadelphia used visual mediato construct both a Hong Kong identity abroadand Americanidentities,often intersectingin the same media(see Wong 1999b).These connectionsremind us that mass media represent a realm in which local and are sometimes with popconstantlyrenegotiated, global corn.

ParallaxView,1974;Streetwise, Baker 1984;TheFabulous (filmsof BarryLevinsonand Boys, 1989;etc.) to Baltimore John Waters, among others; see Barth 1991: 25-28, di221-232). The meaningsof films andcitiesnonetheless with between citizens who live and re-create these verge across cityscapesdaily andthose who see themreproduced national andglobalscreens. Differentmeaningsalso reverberate throughurbanvisual cultureat the local level. Watchingthe evening news, or readingthe newspaper throughshorthand photographic of "bad" or "elite" how do we images neighborhoods, know our own city? A friendbom and raisedin Philadelphia,for example,insistedthatTradingPlaces was his favoritemovie for the city-"that anyonewouldknow those houses are on the Main Line." While the film identifies Philadelphia,this observationof universalityis more a of local citizenshipthanglobal spectatorshipstatement whichnonethelessmakesit important. Yet, whatdoes that knowledgemean,amongandwithincities?Here,we must be awareof what StephenFore (applyingJosephStraubhaarto Hong Kong)has labeled"cultural That proximity." intothe U.S. market, is, for a starlike JackieChanbreaking stardom in Hong Kongevokes a distinctcontext:
In EastAsia, whereChanis already a majorstar,the "Chineseness" of his personais, of course,more closely aligned with the cultural heritage and life of the average moviegoer, whetherat a primarylevel of culturalproximity(for audiences in Hong Kong, Taiwanandthe PRC),or at a secondary level (for non-Chineseaudiences in Asian countrieswhere Hong Kong movies are widely distributed).In the United States,though,wherethe level of Chan'sChinesenessis low, New Line found itself faced with a double dilemma. [Fore 1996:247]

Visual Culture and Urban Experience

Urbanvisual cultureincludes production, images, and that build each other as experiences upon complex inThe tertexts. iconic meaningsof the Eiffel Towerfor Paris or Independence Hall in Philadelphia, for example, were constructed by travelers,critics, architects,and historians before they became embeddedas a mythic shorthand for place in films from Hollywoodto Bollywood. Today,like Bank of Chinaand Hong Hong Kong's new monumental Kong and ShanghaiBank towers (Williams 1989), these emblemscan be usedto defendlocal identity,sell developmentsites, commentironicallyon local transformations, or in situate a films. texts plot development simply Through like JackBarth'sRoadside subtitled TheMovie Hollywood, Lover'sState-by-State Guideto Film Locations,Celebrity and More(1991), Attractions, Hangouts,CelluloidTourist can out a cinematic nation from Seattle, spectators map Washington(It Happenedat the World'sFair, 1963; The

As StephenTeo adds,"As JackieChanincreasingly trains his eyes on the international market,his personalitybecomes more pliable, more rubbery.This makes Chan's in his international characters films less distinctivelyChinese, or even distinctively HongKong"(2000:6). Beyond the cinema, of course,urbanvisual cultureincludes responses as local as graffiti sprayedover urban murals(or vice versa), as personalas criticalreadingsof as globalcinemaor expatriate nostalgiaandas widespread social rejectionof a workas unreal,foreign,or dangerous, or the lionization of nativedaughters andsons. Through all of these, film and othermass mediabecome incorporated into debatesover urbanidentitiesamidlocal diversityand on worldmediastagesin eventsandreadings thatareoften intertwined. for celebrated the year Philadelphia, example, 2000 with a mass runup the steps of the Art Museum(inEd Rendell), imitatinga well-known cluding then-mayor scene from Rocky(1976). On almost any visit to the museum area, one sees touristsand residentsimitatingthis cinematic image of resilience against a post-industrial cityscape. Yet, local debate has raged for decades over whetheror not this site is an appropriate place for a statue

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of Rocky. Moreover,this image does not always coincide with elite strategies to sell the city via high culture, history, or even as the "placethatloves you back." opportunity, At a moreintimatelevel, the institutions and"places" of mass visual culturethus createexperiencesof urbancitizenship and public spheresbeyond elite norms. Miriam Hansenhas eloquently this with regard to spectatorargued in and the nickelodeons of New York ship, class, gender City:
The nickelodeonwas a realplace, locatedin the centeror the andeasily accessiworld,ordinary marginof the immigrants' ble. At the same time, it openedup into a fantasticspace,giving pleasurein the juxtapositionof diverse, often incompatible, and at times impossible sites and sights-in the very principleof disjunctionthatinformedthe varietyformat.... The aestheticsof disjunction not only contestedthe presumed cultureand society in the name homogeneityof the dominant of which immigrants were marginalized and alienated,more it lent the of disorientation and disimportantly, experience placementthe objectivityof collective expression.It is in this sense that the notion of the cinema as heterotopia converges with the concept of an alternativepublic sphere-as a medium thatallows people to organizetheirexperienceson the basis of their own context of living, of specific needs, conflicts andanxieties.[1992:108].

we mustbe carefulto distinguishamongmeCertainly, dia and experiencesin the construction and readingof urban visual culture.Some visual mediaprove local in their own way: architecture is simplynot easily transferable but takes on new meaningswithin mass media, as cities like Barcelonaand Bilbao have discoveredin the 1990s. Television is both nationaland local. While some radio and television networksor station groups send pre-packaged formatsandprograms all over the country,manylocal stations need to attract local audienceswith programming on mundane,yet popularissues like the weatherand sports. They may serve as vehicles for discussionof the city although they often risk becoming the purveyorsof dark consumers. The Internet is global,local, mythsto suburban andindividualistic, withdifferent dispointsof production, andreception. Even so, while Amazon.commay tribution, seem virtual,its warehousesare real and huge. All these mediademandlocal centersfor globalproduction-magazines, film, andtelevisionthatshapetheirpresenceandrein "Holception.Hence, Los Angeles figuresprominently lywood" because it includes Hollywood and offers a convenientshootingstagealbeitone opento multipleinter(see Davis 1998). No matterhow fast informapretations tion and images can overridethe restrainsof time and space,humanbeingslive in realspaces,or places,andtime even as they see through mediated images. Elements of urbanmass visual culture also underpin competitionamong cities. Hence, Hong Kong celebrated its 1997 handover fromBritainto Chinawith 100 Days of Cinema,its best knownmultimedia product,and its Film-

Mart,which soughtto sell those productsabroad.Global film starJackieChanhas featured in the Hong prominently Tourist Association website. Other cities Kong jockey to such The Film Office (and gain exposure profits). Chicago (http://www.ci.chi.il.us/SpecialEvents/FilmsOffice/About. html),for example,reportson its websitethat300 productions have left $730 million in the city, while "Chicagois showcasedin film andtelevisionproductions seen by millions all overthe world.Thishigh-profile exposurehelpsto establishnew impressionsof the city and increaseglobal awareness." In an era of mobile capital and information flows, the image of the city that mass media use, create, andextendtranslates intochoices of residence,production, and development.Even small cities like Ocala, Florida, At the same time, proclaimthatthey are "camera-ready." critics worry that administrators like Ed Rendell, concerned with post-industrial imagery and marketing,may have been transforming and othercities into Philadelphia the "City as Disney extravaganza with floats lit up by a thousandpoints of light, the City increasinglyfashioned anddesignednot for those who live withinit but for those who neverwill"(Bissinger1997:371). Within this global media web, however, not all cities or meanings.Some prove equal in salience,construction, have been home to productionas well as distribution: Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Bombay,New York, andParis are global movie capitals.Others,while offeringa variety of audiencesand spaces, are generallybackground rather thanhomes to producers who will interpret them anew. In these second cities, in fact, we must also pay attentionto differentroles within the process of creatingfilm. Baltimore,for example,while a smallercity thanPhiladelphia, has been lovingly chronicledby two native sons-Barry LevinsonandJohnWaters-whose films differin memory andevocationfromthe use of the city as scenarioin Hollywood films. We must also note a rangeof broadcastand morenarrowcast in whichtelevisionandvideo productions expandthe worldof urbanimages,creatingmeaningsless uniformthanthose of cultural industries, especially as we diverse in life. Even so, we can probe readings everyday touch the issues raised Nestor Garcia scarcely upon by Canclinifor cities inundated withforeignimages of urban(1999). ity andmodernity In the end, mass mediaand visualculturethus force us to thinkaboutrelationsof powerandresistance. Who producesimages?Who distributes themandthrough whatnetwork?Who readsthem and underwhatconstraints? Who understands andinterprets omissions?TheSixthSense, for example, lacks majorspeakingroles for African Americans although they constitute a sizeable proportionof residents.How is this absencereadin a loPhiladelphia's cal AfricanAmericanneighborhood theater? At the same time, films focused on gang violence among African Americans,like BoyzN theHood (1991) or New Jack City

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whitereaders (1991), confirmstereotypes amongsuburban and led mall theaterownersto avoid bookingsbecauseof the actions they feared from their audiences,reaffirming of urbanAfricanAmericanyouthas a disthe construction ruptiveforce(Baker1999). This meshingof experienceand imageryalso forces us of urban to reconsiderthe complexity and contradictions "stand for" While the Tower Eiffel Paris, symbolism. may in it omits elements of films, many especially Hollywood Parisiansociety and struggle. Even Jacques Tati in his masterfulPlaytime(1967) evoked it as an elusive image that tourists only glimpse on posters or in reflections (BarthesandMartin1964;Ockman2000). As IenAng has shown, readingsof the same text differ accordingto the andsocial formation of audiences(1985).Withrecultural for to gard Hong Kong, example,we have arguedthatThe meanWorldof Suzie Wong(1961) conjuresvery different ings and associationsoutside the city, and within Hong as opposed to Chinese citizens. Kong among expatriates While fromthe outsideSuzie Wong fit popular Orientalist to a whiteknight, imagesof an exotic female,subordinated Chinesepeople in Hong Kong contestedits linguisticand racial verisimilitudeduring productionand ignored the As Hong Kong becamea majorfinanfilm subsequently. cial power internationally, Suzie Wong became increasthe Tourist irrelevant to locals. AssociaNonetheless, ingly tion still marketsHong Kong as Suzie Wong's abode to outsiders (McDonoghandWong in press). Previous anthropological studies have already raised about mass media,includingpioneerimportant questions Powdermaker (1950) on Hollywood ing workby Hortense and Ian Jarvieon Hong Kong (1978). More recently,the cinemasof SouthAsia have been the subjectof model investigationsof mass media and urbanculture,including the workof SaraDickey (1993, 1997), CarolBreckenridge (1995), Purima Mankekar(1999), and TejaswaniGanti (in press). Susan Ossman has proposeda more holistic sense of urbanvisual culturein her PicturingCasablanca (1994); Ron Burnett (1993), JeffreyHimpele(1996), Mark (1996), andBrianLarkin Liechty(1996), ArjunAppadurai (1997) all have raised compelling questions of ethnourbanreadings.While not urban graphicandtransnational in focus, EricMichaels'ssensitiveanalysesof the interactions of cultureand video among Australianaborigines (1992) also have been models in our work.2At the same time, we realizethatthe studyof urbanvisualcultureis an field in which anthropological methods interdisciplinary and theoriesmust share.Here, for example,film theorists and historiansoffer ethnographic insightsincludingthose of MiriamHansen(1992) on silentfilm andthe creation of new urbanpublicspheres;David Clarke(1992) andMark Lamster's (2000) collections on film and urban form; Turner and Ngan (1996), Law Kar and Stephen Teo (1997), Law Kar(1999), Li Cheuk-To(1996, 1997),Linda Lai (1997), Stephen Teo (1997, 2000), David Bordwell

(2000), StephenFore (1996, 1999), and others on Hong andMiKong film; andDavidDocherty,David Morrison, chael Tracey(1987), David Morley (1996), JudithMayne Turner (1993), Graeme (1997), andmanyotherson spectatorship.Our interesthere, however, is not to review volumes of generalstudieswith which we feel urbananthroof pology intersects,but to underscorethe contributions to this established debate. Hence turn we to anthropology ourown materials.

The Electric City: Experiencing Films in Hong Kong

Hong Kong filmmakingand viewing emergedwith the earliest days of cinematographic innovation worldwide Film Archives 1997). After the Chinese (Hong Kong Revolutionof 1949,HongKongfilmmaking,like otherindustries,was infusedwithcapital,expertise,andpersonnel fromShanghaiandfromotherChinesewho fled the Communistregime.The presenceof Chinesefromdifferentreto gions, speakingdifferentChinese tongues, contributed the growthof a multilingual Chinesefilm industry basedin the territorywhose productionsreached a peak of 676 films and videos in 1996 (Hong Kong Reports1997:319; Teo 1997). While this is an extraordinary level of production for a territory of 6.5 million inhabitants, the industry fed an EastAsianmarket as well as an international market of Chinesediaspora. Hong Kong kung-fufilms also found cross-cultural success from Nepal to Africa to marketing the Americas.MarkLiechty,for example,refersto the imfilms amongurbanyouthsin Kathportanceof "English" mandu,citingpictures by BruceLee (1996:123). This powerof cinemadid not escape the attention of the colonial government, whichtook films by truckto refugee settlementsin the 1950s and built cinemas in large-scale public housing estates even as they exercised censorship and othercontrolson local distribution. Hong Kong also becamethe firstBritishcolony to receivetelevisionvia cable in 1957, creatinganothervenue for negotiatingimage andcontrol. By the 1980s and 1990s, "Hong Kong Style" even changedHollywoodactionflicks. Directorsand starshave been recruitedfor big budget productionsin the United States from John Woo's Face-Off (1998) to Chow YunFat's starring role in Annaand the King (1999) on a stage set in Malaysia (another visual-spatial displacement). fromBritMeanwhile,HongKongfacedits own transition ish colony to autonomous within the Chinese state. region as social of Hong Kongmoviegoing appropriation movies also has changedin recentdecadesof economicdevelof globalconsumption opmentand hybridization patterns. Those from whom we collected stories about neighborhood theatersand family picnics in cinemas of the 1960s weremorelikelyto go as adultsin the 1990sto sleek multithe plexes associatedwith commercialcentersthroughout

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city, symbolsof the new andsuccessfulHongKongandits consumption(Turnerand Ngan 1996). These same years have witnessedincreasingconcernsaboutlocal audiences. While moreHong Kong theatersarebuilteach year,audifrom98 millionin 1967 (fora population ences dropped of 3.7 million) to 20 million in 1999 (for 6.9 million). The for Cantonesefilms, highly audience-driven markets commodities, have especially suffered. Competition from video, laserdisc, VCD, andDVD as well as televisionrepresentsa long-standing concern,but saggingqualityin local productions also has been blamedfor lower box office revenues. Film producershave adaptedtheir productto have slashed prices, perceivedconsumption,distributors and theaters have createddiscountdays to ameliorate this crisis. These experiences are hardly unique to postcolonial Hong Kong. Indeed, while the models for contemporary cineplexes,theirconcessions,and theirHollywoodtie-ins similarconsumption is shared betrayAmericanmarketing, in Buenos Aires, Barcelona,andPhiladelphia. Yet an ethnographyof moviegoing as urbanexperienceilluminates distinctionsand contradictions in Hong Kong visual culture and everydayconsumption.Local and global meanings of the cinemabeyondthe screen-including architecture, ambience, prestige and choice of product, shared clientele and experiences, and even food-also have shapedHong Kongmovies since theirfirstpublicperformances. As we have noted in ethnohistorical researchsince 1996, the choice of site, company,images,andexperience also havereconstructed divisionswithinmetropolitan sociThese include colonial caste and divisions of ety. ethnicity, class andmobility,and otherconstructions of age, gender, culturalcapital,and the city itself. While the image of the city is compellingin HongKongfilms, so is the experience of that image and its alternatives and their incorporation intoeverydaylife andidentity. Evenaftercolonialruleendedin 1997,long-standing divisions between an English-speakingaudience (British, American,and other expatriatesand Chinese bilinguals) and Chinese speakers,who make up 98% of the population, remain clear in the territory'smore than 60 daily newspapers.English-language newspaperadvertisements list less thanhalf of the screeningsin the territory advertised in the Chinese press. English-languageadvertisementshave focussedon first-run withcomfortable theaters decor, easy parking,and affiliationwith local chains and international distribution. These theatershave also tended to be associatedwith business/entertainment centers:no cinemasemergedin areasidentifiedwith colonialresidential districtslike the Peakor Stanley.First-run theater palaces also have relied on Chinesepatronsand advertisein Chinese dailies as well. Some English-speaking patrons, meanwhile, go to predominantlyChinese theaters for in publicityshowsthe Hong Kongmovies.Yet the contrast

divisions of imagined and communicativecommunities still perceivedto exist (drawing on Anderson1991). The intermediary of colonialsociety,meanpopulations other Withits economic habits. while, developed viewing for has become home to boom, example, Hong Kong contracted domestic 80% of whom are 170,000 workers, from the Philippinesand primarilyfemales who residein the homes of their employers(Hong Kong Report 1998: 122; Constable1997). Accordingto those with whom we talked,they generallydid not go to movies unless shepherdingtheiremployer'schildren:cinema was expensive by contrastto Filipinoprices and maids lackedfree time. On the otherhand,businessesand informalarrangements cateredto Filipinoswho gathereddowntownon theirday off witha lively tradein Filipinovideos. By the late 1990s, Filipinocable stationswere also availablefor home convisual culturerelinking imhence,an expatriate sumption: the to in cultural distinction migrants Philippines emerged to bothHongKongandHollywood. The longerestablished andmoreintegrated SouthAsian attended both and Chinese cinemasas population English well as maintaining video for outlets Hindiand specialized other films. An informantalso reportedthat they rented halls for special showings of Indian cinema that also servedmultiplecommunity functions:
SouthAsian Movies arescreenedin the HK Convention Cen-

tre at leastonce a monthfor about$100-150 HK ($13-20 havenever beento onebecause US).I personally youcanget the samemoviea weeklateron tapefor $10 HK.Mostof thesemoviesarecommercial filmsnotevendocumentaries or Satyajit Ray movieswhichis a real shamebecauseRay's moviesareexcellent. thesefilmscreenings areanMoreover, other formof socialgatherings-"Oh, lookwhosheis with,a newman?" Cinemasin Hong Kong also must be differentiated in termsof genre,with concomitant of class and implications otherdivisions attachedto the textual imageryon screen and some implicationsfor the space of spectators. Apart fromthe first-run cinemasoutsidethe mainstream theaters, also specializein artfilms andpornography. The domesticationof children'scinema,in turn,underscores socioculturalchangesin the urban over time. filmgoingexperience Art cinemas,in fact, sharemany characteristics across culturesthatwe know as filmgoers.Hong Kong's Broadin its name, expresso bar, intensive way Cinematheque, verbal materialson currentofferings, and other features, would not be unfamiliar in Philadelphia or Buenos Aires. In fact, artcinemasin Hong Kong tend to offer the same found elsewhere to a self-selected global programming cosmopolitanclientele defined by "tastes"that roam far outsideHongKong.Cultural is relative, however. proximity The intellectualworksof Wong Kar-Waiare regarded as in HongKong,buttheyplayin mainstream difficult theaters ratherthanbeing relegatedto art houses by the equation

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of art = foreign that dominatesin the UnitedStates (Fore 1996). "Serious" films, including local documentaries and community-basedworks, are also treated as civic goods, screened in cultural centers, museums, and the FilmFestival.In fact,artcinema, Hong Kong International a evokes worldwide, strategyof hypermoderity whose in cinemas and festivals meritmore attenmanifestations tion (see Wong andMcDonoghin presson the Film Festival). cinema also evokes seemingly "univerPornographic of theater andaudience.In manycitsal"characterizations redistrictswhose character ies, these theatersdemarcate verberateswith the perceivedimmoralityof the product has and experience. In Hong Kong, this programming tended to representthe last phase of decaying neighborcinemas also hood cinemas. Some other "neighborhood" run special 10 a.m. showings of Hong Kong, Japanese, before their more European,and Americanpornography The social construcevening screenings. family-oriented madethis screeningvulnertion of watchingpornography able to competitionfrom videos and otherforms of more privatespectatorship. Children'scinema per se lacks specific venues in the city. Chinese cinemagoingin the 1950s and 1960s was strongly associated with family involvement in Hong Kong films ratherthancateringto specific pre-adolescent audiences;Hong Kong studios, in fact, have rarelyproduced specializedchildren'sfilms in the sense of Disney, or the JapaneseTotorroor Pokemon.In the Dreamworks, between two 1990s, we observeda continualdisjuncture On the one kinds of children's cinematic participation. hand,films such as Disney's Hercules(1997) and Tarzan (1999) have become consumptionevents at multiplexes that offer Cantonese and English versions on multiple screensandlead easily to a HappyMeal withrelevanttoys at a nearbyMcDonald'samidfurther purchases synergistic (games,dolls, CD-ROM,etc.). On the other,video, DVD, and video compactdisc (VCD) have also createda separate, familiar sense of children's viewing in the home, alone or with friends. Yet, these changes also suggest changes in relationof family and public spherethat may becomeevidentin the next generation (see Leung 1990 on the and family publicsphere). Despite the formativeimpact of social categoriesand genres, the primarydivision in space and experiencein Hong Kong moviegoing since its inception cuts across these categoriesas it re-createsthem.This is the division betweenthe oldercinemapalace(and,since the 1970s, the theateras Chinesepopumultiplex)andthe neighborhood larcinemacenters. on the image The film palaceoften modeledmodernity Lee Theater, The and services. of the West in architecture Theafor example,was copied fromLondon'sHaymarket in ter. The downtown King's Theater, opened 1931, boastednot only its constantsupplyof Hollywoodfeatures

butalso its decorandtechnology. in its inaugural pamphlet This technology included not only projectiondevelopto set the experienceapart mentsbut also air-conditioning from steamy streets(and neighborhood theaters). Finally, the pamphletalso noted thatthe interiorwas designedby the same firm thathad decoratedthe governor'smansion (King'sCinema1931). A laterbilingualfolio for the 1952 opening of Kowloon's Princess Theater underscoreda of its exteriorstrucof "thesplendour similarconjunction in the fountain beautiful ture and the lobby,"a car park, and"onlyselectandfirst-rate chairs," "scientifically-tested the world, espeof majorstudiosthroughout productions Films, cially those of R.K.O. Radio Pictures,Paramount Columbia Films,etc"(1952[?]:n.p.). These grandioseedifices did not, however,limit themselves to "English" audiences,althoughtheirhigherprices anddemandsof dressanddecorumselectedfor attendance OlderChinesewith whom in termsof class and urbanity. themas remembered we spoke,includingWong's parents, the colonizsites for datingandspecialoccasions.Instead, ers foundthemselvesin gildedmonolingual cages without alterthe easy experienceof a rangeof Chinese-language nativesin movies andvenues. Most of these cinemashave now disappeared, although this does not indicatea socioculturalrevolutionin Hong Kong classes or tastes. Instead, their claims on space marketof provedtoo expensive in the booming property in cinematic a shift noted in Jarvie the city. Already, 1978, space:
Within the cities, the cinemas concentrated themselves centres:CausewayBay on the aroundthe twin entertainment Islandand NathanRoad in Kowloon. The numbersin outlying areas like Aberdeen,Western District and North Point wereclosed and Severaltheatres havebeensteadilyshrinking. demolishedduringmy five months'field tripin 1973, including the Princess,in NathanRoad, the Hong Kong Grand,in Queen's Road East, and the delightful little Ray, in Third Streetnearthe University.But on the otherhand,new theatres andeven new theatre conceptswere abuilding.[1978:61-62]

As real estate boomed in Central,and then, in the 1970s and 1980s, in Wanchaiand CausewayBay, oldertheaters became liabilities,dismantled,and only occasionallyrein pieces on multiplefloors withina new skyconstructed like the Lee Theatre.Indeed,the cinema may be scraper remembered only in a vague allusion, like the EntertainthehistoricKing's ment(Lo Yuk) Building,whichreplaced Theatre. The 1983 Hong Kong Annual Reportnoted that "Alof cinemasclosed downduringthe yeara thougha number new trendof mini-cinemasstartedwith the opening of a mini-cinema three-in-one complex"(p. 194). In advertiseas these ments, emerged identifiablefeaturesin the late of the 1980s andearly 1990s, with the initialconsolidation United Artists (UA) chain. By 1990, for example, links among cinemas in various parts of GreaterHong Kong

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and film distribuappearedin newspaperadvertisements tion. This trendagainparallelsdevelopmentin the United of theaters, States and Europe,markinga suburbanization an urban which, while not necessarily core,ofeliminating fered similar services at more convenientcentralpoints. Both Hollywood and Cantoneseofferingsnow respondto of populationwithin new towns like the decentralization Sha Tin and Tuen Mun. At the same time, multiplexes have moved to consumption centers,amid stores and fast food services like McDonald's(see Watson 1997) or the local fast food of Caf6de Coral. This shift to multiplexescoincidedin interestingways with growing strengthin Hong Kong filmmakingduring the boom of the 1970s and 1980s,the eraof the New Wave (Law 1999). Hong Kong films regainedbox office primacy domestically and expanded in overseas markets in includingparticipation throughstrategicinterventions film festivalandartistcircuitsas well as majorcommercial circuits (Leung and Chan 1997:146; Li 1996). Major worksby Tsui Hark,JohnWoo, andRingo Lambuiltconalongsidethe more artisticcareersof tinuing reputations and Ann Hui. New patternsof exhibition Kar-Wai Wong meantthatHong Kong and Hollyand distribution spaces wood films are screenedside by side in new worlds of choice, which may even have sustainedsome Hong Kong projectsor allowedthema wideraudience. Whathave all these changesmeantfor the consumer's offermoreameniexperienceof cinema?New multiplexes ties of consumption-rangingfrombettersoundand seats decor)to choice amongmultiplemovies (withoutelaborate alat the same site. They may also imply moreuniformity of limited offerings. An alarmed beit wider distribution commentfrom the FrenchCahiersdu Cinema,for example, warnsthat"themultiplex-mega complexesof movie houses near commercialcenters-are flourishingeverywhere in Francenear large centers,tendingto make cinfor consumption" ema a banalproduct (Pardo1997:60,our Movies,to sucha critic,becomenot an experitranslation). choice in the mall. ence in themselvesbutanother Data on the experienceof cinema since the 1980s provide us with interestingsupportfor this view. A Hong Kong Universitystudentwho recalledlocalismandfamily in her childhoodmemories,when asked aboutplaces she regularlywent in the 1990s, quicklyreplied:"UA Times Square or Queensway. Because they're newer. Newer. And they show the kind of movies I wantto see. And my the exfriendsgo there."Anotherstudentalso denigrated "Theyshow Chinese perienceof Chinesemovie theaters: movies so I am dealingwiththe samereality.And thenthe sound effects and the image effects are not so good as valuedthe consumption UA." Still anotherspontaneously are six movies to choose featuresof the multiplex:"There
from ... and it's comfortable." With a dramatic drop in

became theflexibility of manysmaller theaters spectatorship,

a strategy for ownersas well as consumers (MingPao, July 13, 1997). Yet, these cinemasalso respond,on the whole, to more narrowlytargetedconstructionsof the typical andeducation As affluence,maturity, viewer andproduct. the this facilitated new becamemorewidespread 1990s, by dimensionsand choices in movie consumption.Perhaps nowhereis this relationship betweenthe affluentconsumer and the multiplexmodel laid out betterthanin The Place magazine(1991-1994), publishedby the Swire Company to sell its investmentin the upscale Pacific Place mall. multinational merchandisers Here,amidads for glamorous GianniVersace,andHermes,were like Seibu,Montblanc, or featuresdetailing interviewswith cinema personalities with links Hollywood, accompanied by preHong Kong views for the mall's UA multiplex.Shoppingfor movies looks moreandmorelike shoppingfor any othergoods. The primaryalternativeto cinema palaces for many Hong Kong Chinesefilmgoersof the postwarperiodwere like thosedescribed local structures by Yuen-ling. cheaper, the older of Hong Theaters Chinese settlements throughout once offered not a only continually Kong changinground of second-and third-run movies, but also escape from the crampedand crowded conditionsof postwarhousing. In andexperience, the identities bothproduct they reaffirmed of smallercommunities.Neighborhood cinemas were familiar; moreover,they had other attributes,as a Hong Kong University studentrecalled:"Therewere a lot of hall.We'd buy a lot of thingsandgo hawkersin the theatre intothe movie. In fact,it was the mostinteresting thing,the in mostattractive for me to movies. Because as thing going a childyou don'tunderstand the movie thatmuch."Yet by 1978 comments,these theaterswere sufferingthe fate of centralpalaces,reducingHong Kong's totaltheaters to 79. this has resulted from factors Again, many including neighborhood family mobility,new housredevelopment, ing, and competitionfrom multiplexesand alternatemedia. Thedisappearance of neighborhood/working-class theaters has not markedthe end of Hong Kong Chinese cinema. Whenwe askedfriendsand movie specialistsfor the most "authentic" Hong Kong viewing experiencein the we were directed to late night showingsfor young 1990s, audiencesat large popularhouses in the urbanentertainin mentcenters.In Kowloon,for example,the Chinachem the popularnightlife areaof Tsim Sha Tsui East offers a lively mixtureof ChineseandWesternmovies with shows the nightto lively crowds. continually running throughout Whilethese andsimilartheatres hadcharacteristic food, ambience,and noise levels, they are not unlike showings that appealedto similarage groupsin the United States: one mightconsiderthe ambienceandmythof drive-incultureas a comparison. The impactof the youthfulconsumer has been reinforcedby fan magazines like Milky Way Journal(NganHauWahPao) sincethe 1950s.Young stars

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todayseek multipleexposureacrossAsia in rockconcerts, as well as movie events;their television,andcommercials their are sale and lives and loves fill fan magafor photos zines. As in the UnitedStatesandEurope,this audience, its enthusiasm,and its buying power have spurredmarketlike the young gang movies of the later drivenproductions which 1990s, speedilyreproduced. Hong Kong producers To cash in on the success of Youngand Dangerous (Gu and DangerousII and WakJai, 1996), for example,Young III were shot and releasedin the same year, with another sequelfollowingin 1997 (Li 1997). like Althoughgenerallyin denseChineseurbandistricts than malls, these large, diMongkok or Wanchairather vided theatresseemed to overlapwith both neighborhood theatresand new chains.In none of our visits, moreover, did audiencesshow the legendaryspiritfor whichthey are famous in Hong Kong-talking back to the screen or throwingthingsat it, apartfrom some illegal smokingand louder conversationthan would be permittedin a multilike the reducedticketsforteen campaigns plex. Marketing movies or the two-for-one lovers tickets that were attemptedat variouspoints remindedus in fact that these were audiencesfor whom Chinesetheatres competedwith more glamorouschains.While these theatersmight share withmulactionpicturesor high-profile starsanddirectors of also retained possession several tiplexes,however,they local and comedies, romances intensely genres including as Lai often which, (1997) argues, performan extremely local identityunlikelyto pull in crossoveror foreignaudiences. Obviously, this story of film as experience might be elaboratedthroughanalyses of the roles we have mentioned for television and for home-viewing devices, includingVCRs, DVDs, and VCDs, which make cheap pirate copies of currentlyplaying films available almost the economicsof citizenship. instantly,againcomplicating Moreover,we mighttalk in more detail aboutchangesin image and content(see Wong and McDonogh in press). Yet, at the same time, the urbanvisual cultureof Hong Kong should also be seen beyond the city and territory. Film in HongKonghas alwaysbeen a globalphenomenon. As such, in the Chinese diaspora,film and its reproductions and commentary have complementedotherfamiliar institutionsof urban identity ranging from food stores, to regionalassociationsto forchurches,and restaurants Globalismalso createsnew loeign-language newspapers. calisms. Movies, videos, and television provide Chinese and otherswith connectionsto theirhomelandand places of identityin theirnew urbanworlds.Hong Kong videos provide familiarexperiences,whetheror not immigrants came fromHongKong. In Philadelphia, forexample, Chinesemovieswereshown in in an the at on Saturdays 1990s theatrically only midnight outletmall multiplex(theymovedin 2000 to another theater in Northeast Xeroxedannouncements are Philadelphia).

plasteredon Chinatownwalls; only recently have they beenaddedto the generalmovie listingsof local alternative papers.Dependingon the popularityof the film and its stars, attendanceranges from about 40 to 1,000; some films (like those of JackieChan)also show up in competvenues.This screeninghas become a cening mainstream ternot only for Chinesebutalso for otherAsian andAsian Americanadolescents. This dearthof targetedtheatrical screenings,however, does not reflect Asian-Americanconsumption. Video storesdot the streetsof Chinatown; smallerrentalcollections arejammedinto the cranniesof food and stationary shops. Most serve a predominantlyChinese clientele: areavailable manyprograms only in Chinese,while clients and clerksgenerallyare morefluentin ChinesethanEnglish. Hong Kong videos are also availablein otherAsian ethnicvideo stores:thus,Cambodian and Vietnameseimrent dubbedHong Kong videos migrantsin Philadelphia from their own neighborhood stores.In this sense, again, has beHongKong movie andcassettedistribution already come Americanized (see Wong 1999b). Technology changes time as well as space; television as well as featurefilms travelfrom Hong Kong programs to Americain a matterof days, whethertheatrical hits or events like the Miss Hong Kong pageant.Movies become availableas soon as videodiscs are sold in Hong Kong, dubbedinto NTSC/VHStapes.Accordingto storeowners, however,immigrants prefertelevisionprograms packaged as cassettesto featuremovies. The most populartapesare those of soap operas,historicalromances,and action series. These productions, if successful, run for a year or more in Hong Kong (e.g., the recent Genuine Feelings [Jun Ching]). The latestadditionto Hong Kong transnational visual cultureis satellite,which allows the household to receive programmingfrom Taiwan, Mainland China,andTVB Jade,the majorHong Kong Chinesetelevision channel.Not only is this a familiarexperienceof watchingwell-knownshows in a familiarlanguage,but it also reinforces cultural proximity: as one friend said, "whenI see the fire in Lai Chee Kwok,I called my friends and relatives right away." Yet new connections are stressed:"My fathercomes to my house more often now, he likes to watchsatelliteprograms, and my kids' Chinese is gettingbetter." Middle-classfamilieswho haveinstalledthis dish rarely rentvideos anymore.However,exceptfor news programs, Jade does not permit direct, instantaneous transmission from Hong Kong, tryingto controla rentalmarketchalandexlengedby those who tapefromsatellitebroadcasts the a virchange productsamong friends,reconstructing tual"neighborhood" of viewingandcommentary. In these ways, Hong Kong films and television go beto reconstitute an urbanimmigrant visyondentertainment ual culture.These audienceshave the culturalcompetence to read these texts, both in language and in intertextual

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thatarevery culturally references bounded.This desirefor with a homelandis also marketed successconnectedness who controls the TVB, fully by largestChinese-language in the world. Immigrantslear television programming about show business news from ethnic newspapersand glossy magazinesand rent the videos to see the latesthot stars or society events. They also exchangetapes among themselves and constructconversationsaroundthese familiar topics, and they transmitcontemporary Chinese the oftentimes culture to American-born younger, popular second generation.Yet these consumersof Hong Kong film and video are no less cosmopolitanthantheir Hong Indeed, althoughthere is no way to Kong counterparts. gatherconcretedata,discussionswith friendsin the Philadelphia Chinese communitysuggest that Titanic or The SixthSense was just as popularwith Chinesehere as with otherAmericans.The differencein audiencethen,in both areas,is not so much in what they choose to see or how they evaluateit butin the arrayof meaningsthey construct, and intertextsthey use, in which Hong Kong media and arebothcomponents. This symbioAmericanproductions at sis, in fact,underpins HongKongcinemaandaudiences, the contextof mobilityand home andin diaspora, although quests for culturalidentitychange the meaningsof viewings in each case as well as across othermedia channels like radioandtelephone.

Eclectic City: and Reading Images in Philadelphia Creating

In contrastto Hong Kong, Philadelphia has not been a in the UnitedStates,despitethe centerfor film production pioneeringwork of SiegmundLubin, self-styledKing of the Movies who established his Lubinvillestudiosin North (Eckhardt 1997). Yet over time, the city was Philadelphia in a center other ways for images. With Curtis certainly EveningPost withits NorPublishingsellingthe Saturday manRockwellcovers,Philadelphia shapeda globalimage of Americanlife (Friedrich 1970;HennesseyandKnutson recurrent at1999).World'sFairsandothereventsbrought tentionto the city. Indeed,patriotic historyimpressed upon Americanschoolchildren and visitorsfromabroad the imHall andthe LibertyBell as symbols ages of Independence of a city and the nation,albeit one trappedin and by its moreover,remainsthe fifth largestnapast. Philadelphia, tionaltelevisionmarketandan important pointon national film distribution.Yet, how does a city without Hong of urbanfilmic Kong's marketpositionin the production images negotiatethese images to its own diverseresidents as well as to those who live outsidethe metropolitan area? We approach thisby lookingat textualimagesof the city in mainstream films in relationto local experienceand narrowcastmediathatconstruct the visualcity, notonly as imandaudiencelive. ages, butalso as placeswhereproducers

As a large city with an identifiablename, Philadelphia has takenon a protagonistic role in repeatedmovies, espewith to cially regard space and class. The Philadelphia Story(1940), for example,franklyignoredthe city to focus on the affluentsuburban MainLine in a storypatterned on the actuallife of a local socialite.Theseimagesof class and conflicthave a longerhistoryin Philadelphia andits representations includethe melodramatic KittyFoyle (novel by Christopher Morley; movie 1940); The YoungPhiladelwhich again pits the hidden histories of (1959), phians Main Line elites againstthe virility of the working-class city; or Hitchcock'sMarie (1964), which plays out class issues betweenthe MainLine (perhaps) andworking-class Baltimore.Trading Places (1983) recastsclass andracein a rarecomic portrait, while the disappointing Downtown (1990) bringsa MainLinepolicemaninto the hardscrabble city. Tom Hanks,in Philadelphia(1993), plays a lawyer who grewup in the MainLine,has a gay relationship in the where he and is redeemed an African works, city by Americanattorney fromthe urbanelite's prejudice against AIDS. Even CitizenKane (1941) uses Philadelphiaas a site for the libraryof the stodgy lawyer who controlled Kane'sinheritance.3 one of the most Class,ethnicity,andspacealso permeate successfuland emblematicPhiladelphia movies, in terms of box office receiptsandimpact:Rocky(1976), whose relationto thecity is as complexas thatof TheWorld of Suzie to In this movie and its Wong Hong Kong. sequels,South a Italian American Philadelphia, working-class, neighborhood (now increasinglypopulatedby SoutheastAsians), andothersectionswere brought home to otherpartsof the UnitedStatesand the world as symbols of personalresilience. This geographyhas permeated otherfilms as well: Two Bits (1996) romanticized South Philadelphiain the Depression,while The Sixth Sense contrasteda homey South Philadelphiawith the cultured Society Hill and Center City. Twelve Monkeys (1995), meanwhile, used Kensington,anotherworking-classneighborhoodfacing to presenta near-apocalyptic transformations, devastating world not unlike a stereotypical local news reporton the a familiar urban cliche of decay, racism,and "Badlands," Local documentaries like despair. PovertyOutlaw(1998), in fact,directlycontestthis imageof Kensington. Thesemovies createpowerfulintertexts for the city as a forits shortcut identification of some formof setting,partly for Hollywood.Other class, racial,or ethnicidentifications issues also ariserepeatedly withinthese films, includinga vague sense of a historiccity hauntedby past sins. While vivid in the contemporary TheSixthSense, one mightalso recall the voice-over first lines of The YoungPhiladelphians: "A man's life, they say, is the sum of all his actions. But the actions are sometimes the results of the hopes, dreams,anddesiresof those who came beforehim. In that sense, my life beganeven before I was born...."

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This foreshadowsthe web of impotence,illegitimacy,and laterin the movie.Yet memoryand unraveled concealment are equally presentin TerryGilliam's adaptacorruption tion of La Jetee to a Philadelphia settingfor TwelveMonkeys andMarnie-a mythicthemethatraisesthe question of cinema as the creatorof moral as well as visual landscapes. While one may arguefor a Hollywood-created mythof New York,political the city, as distinctfromcosmopolitan Washington,or the decadenceof the South (McDonogh and Wong 1993), others choose Philadelphiafor other reasons.TheSixthSense's writer-director more pragmatic for example,was bor andraisedin M. Night Shyamalan, the MainLine, andone newspaper reports:
The suburban Catholicschool he attended-and Philadelphia its groomedlawns and historicstone buildings-was the site of his second movie. The downtown train station that he walks throughregularlyon the way to New York will be a centralpartof his upcomingfilm. And a little known South streetshowcasingthe close proximityof neighPhiladelphia The Sixth borhoodrowhousesopens his currentblockbuster,

Sense.

"I live here, my experiencescome from here, so I make movies that are set here," said M. Night Shyamalan,who "I was jokes abouthis obsession for filming in Philadelphia. in talksto write 'Planetof the Apes' the remakefor Fox and I " [Brown was like, 'How can I place this in Philadelphia?' 1999]

the setting seldom To the world outside of Philadelphia, has the prominencethat local readersaccordit, as is evident in the lack of analysis by film critics. For example, when reviewingTheSixthSense, criticsmentionedPhiladelphia in passing or neglect it altogether.Another reviewer in Tucsonplaced TwoBits in Chicago.Outsideof the UnitedStates,less criticalreaders identifythe city with in America,withoutseeking local or nationaldistinctions, the same way Hong Kong films becomeChineseor Asian urbanindustryand local flavor despitetheirpreponderant (Fore1996;Wong 1999b). These issues of themes, whether complimentaryor a notinsignegative,used or rejectedin the city, illuminate nificantissue of whatit meansfor citizensand officials to dealwithmassimage.InHongKong,thisemerges a through and of shared shared culture, conjunction experiences, sharedresourcesin filmmakingratherthan throughany intervention. In Philadelphia, withoutthe same government localizationof production,finance, and significantaudience, otherquestionsemerge. The local film office does not havethe resources to sell a particularimageof the city; instead, it works to attractfilmmakersby the ease with which they may workaround permits,police, settings,etc. The only reticencethe office noted,in fact, involvedporurban trayalsof the police, who have had a controversial and mass media fichistory seriouslynegative portrayals, tionalandnonfictional. Localfilmmakers likeShyamalan (or

in Baltimore) WoodyAllenin New YorkorBarryLevinson and attract visions of cities auteurs' create loyal fan may bases as well. City officials and businessmenalso have withimagery,turning the city itself into an been concerned off-Broadwaystage for the 2000 RepublicanNational Convention (Roberts1997;Von Bergen 1999). Ironically, one of the most effective controlson imagerymay be the sheerweight of repetition and intertext- one cannotsudor as a city of sexualintrigue denlyre-present Philadelphia not has been set in because the globalespionage stage preover vious movies. In this sense, cities andcultureinteract time: the image of Rockyhas a profoundimpacton both in theHolthe future city andfuturefilms. Hence,a feature land Sentinel (Michigan) melded public efforts toward changeandpast mediaimageryin the headline"Philadelphiashedding'Rocky's'hometownimage"(1998). Here, hegemonic issues, both local and global, have tended to homogenize imagery and voice, whateverthe remainsa complex impactson the city. Yet Philadelphia andconflictivecity whose diversityalso eruptsinto metroLocal voices andlocal diversitygain politanvisualculture. limitedscreeningsthrough publicevents like the PhiladelHouse, and public phia Film Festival, the International televisionstations thathave not only screenedbutalso produced films. These providevariedand illuminating comon of a world mentary floating Hollywoodimagery. Public television station WHYY's nostalgic video of Philadelphia'spast, Things that Aren't There Anymore (1993), and its sequel, for example, stress the lost monuments and experiences of the city, from Connie Mack BaseballStadiumto downtownmovie palacesand nightclubs. When used as fund-raising tools, announcers stressedthe importance of the historythatthe cityhad lost. In an ironicrecognition of demographic decline,they sugwho had gestedusingthe videos as gifts for Philadelphians movedelsewhereso thatthey could relive theirpastin the city. This evokes intriguingintersectionswith issues of on the memorythat hauntsome Hollywood productions city. PhiladelphiaDiaries (1999), anotherWHYY producof Hollywood tion,recastsome of thetermsandgeography imageryby focusing on raciallychargedissues in North andWest Philadelphia. It drew on cityscapesandcommuefforts like the extensive mural programthat has nity in In addition emergedespecially blightedneighborhoods. to broadcast this also an linkages, production incorporated Interet production that as a of reads chronicle interdiary actionwiththe city overthe weeks of production. Other documentaryproductionshave taken polemic stanceson urban issues.Frederick Wiseman'sHigh School out the of North East Philadelphia pointed problems High School.4Squatters:The OtherPhiladelphiaStory (1980) (whose title clearlyrefersback to a class icon of "Hollywood"Philadelphia) chronicledthe effortsof ACORNto reclaimabandoned Welfare housing,while the Kensington

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a feature-length documenRightsUnionhas also produced tary on the housing struggle, Poverty Outlaw (1998), which bringsvoices of women fromKensingtoncaughtin welfare to the screen.While some producpostindustrial tions illuminatesometimeswry visions of the city, like the 2000 Gay Bingo, othersarecaughtup in ongoingissues of race, class, and conflict. Bombing on Osage Avenue (1986), for example,dealt with a controversial city attack on the radicalactivist groupMOVE, which continuesto have repercussions in boththe neighborhood andthe city. The last film, producedby Toni Cade Bambaraand Louis Massiah,also spurred an ongoingprojectto promote activism community throughvideo thatre-posesissues of urban imagination and control. Scribe Video Center, foundedin 1982,has actedas a clearinghouse for videograand filmmakers in various urban phers engaged projects, from personalstudiesto documentation of changingstreet life. Among their interests,the CommunityVisions Project, initiatedin 1990, has soughtto trainlocal groupsto use videos as partof theirorganization. Scribeprovidesadvice and trainingin scripting,camera,and editingas well as professionalfacilitatorswho work with organizational teams.Finally,Scribeschedulesthe work'spremiere at the International films are also screened House; (local) many on local publictelevision.Subjectmatter, form,anddistribution/use arechosenby the groupitself. This project,now responsible for 36 films, has produced a wide varietyof workswithinits definitionof underserved communities.These include many works based in Kensingtonandworkingwithlocal community groups,suchas KensingtonAction Now's We Hope the Message is Getting Through (1991). Other groups and videos include Services' CommunityMentalHealth,MentalRetardation Weare All in ThisTogether(1993); We the People's New Faces of AIDS (1994), and the Anna Crusis Women's Choir's WhenSpeechFlows to Music(1995). The formof the videos includes polemic pieces as well as those by youngeractiviststhatoftenecho musicvideos. Distribution and use, as Wong has found(1997), represent the most variablefeaturesof such grassrootsvideos. Some are used in trainingand fund-raising, with active Some commentaryfrom organizationalrepresentatives. have been sharedwith membersbut have had little more dissemination. Some were abandoned becauseof changes in program,internalconflicts,or disappearance of the orFew itself. have ganization organizations repeatedtheir the efforts the initialvideo productions, given catalyzedby andturnover of interested other reasons. associates,among A closerreading of one suchvideo,Face to Face:It's Not WhatYouThink(1997), on whichWong workedas facilitator,indicatesthe processesby whichurbanvisualculture is createdandsharedat the grassroots level. This video was created by ten youths working with Asian Americans United. It focuses on their experiences and anti-Asian

prejudicein the city and ends poignantlywith personal recognitionsof family and a dedicationto one videographer's sister, who was killed in a video store incidentin SouthPhiladelphia while the video was beingmade. When making Face to Face, the problem of Asian Americanrepresentation5 was discussedat length by the Cambodian Americans and two ChineseAmericans eight who constitutedthe core group as well as their Korean AmericanandChineseadvisors.Yet, while the workis alternative,both in form and content,the producersthemselves were not die-hardcommunity/media activists.The for the video to youthsgot together primarily find a channel to expresstheirconcerns.They werealso consumers of mainstream Americanmediaculture,with some exception via programming from their native countriesas well as were transnaHong Kong. Hence, while these producers their media tionals, literacywas derivedmainly from the hegemonicdiscourse.This explainsthe more MTV style seen at the tape's opening and later parodickung-fu sewith Hollywood quences,as well as the youths'familiarity movieslike SixteenCandles(1984). These videographers put many of theirconcernson the tape-schools, stereotypes, gangs, ethnicidentities.However,they also omittedthemescentralto theirsocietiesand conflicts.Durcultures,such as families and generational the four to five months when the ing youthsmet every Satat Asian American to United discussthe tape,many urday were concernedwith theirrelationships with theirparents. They would say that their parentsstill think that this is rather thanAmerica.They wereexpectedto be Cambodia, who do well in schools,dressappropriately, good children, and stay home at the right time. This subjectwas never broughtup on tape, however, because the youths do not wantto offend theirparents.Furthermore, they know that want a to make they tape reachingnon-Asians,the main of which should be the problemof racismthatall message shared rather thanpointsof difference(thehome). As producers,though, neither these kids nor AAU thoughtclearlyaboutaudience.Yet the video has received andreaction. It has beenshown relativelywide distribution in differentschools andfestivalsandis now distributed by NationalAsianAmericanTelecommunication Association (NAATA). Generally,it was well receivedby educators andfellow AsianAmericans, who haveexpressed commucomments at the & A sessions. Others,esnity through Q white are not aware of antiAmericans, simply pecially Asian racism and find the tape educational.However, AfricanAmericanaudiences,especiallyyouths,have been divided:some have notedsharedstyles unitingthemto the "modelminority," while othershave been criticalof the film becauseof the complexurban racialrelations between the two groupsit depicts. The video is powerfulin its own reflectionson media and identity. Yet as both agents and texts, process and

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productcreateand re-createAsian Americanidentitiesas a global consumersin urbancontexts. They incorporate of American and of influences society experiences range and cultureto be read differentlyby subsequentgroups. Face to Face is a powerfulas well as an intriguingstatement to be read in many ways-personal, ethnic, urban, and even global,basedin the dividedcitizenshipof Philadelphia. and audiencein These linkagesof product,production, in mass mediaandtheirechoes otherprocesses narrowcast of limited screeningin Philadelphiaraise very different visualculture, control,anduse of the questionsabouturban VisionsProject,class andethnicity city. In the Community or key scenarios,but groundsof strugare not metaphors gle. Memories and injustice may still be haunting,but these are not motifs in a plot but causes to be righted. andshare oftenknowproducers Moreover,since audiences theirurbanmilieu,texts become interwovenwith the proandconflict. of urban ductionandreproduction community More than culturalproximity,then, we deal with cultural withina framework thatrecognizesthe styles, production, themes, and even prejudicesof mass media depictionsof the city andgrowsfromthatknowledgein new visualmedia andcultural interpretations.

tools of ethnographicobservation,ideological analysis, and theories of space and place, throughwhich we may further illuminate modem/postmoder cities and their In so doing, we wish to underscore links transformations. betweenthe shapeand experienceof cities and the meanings thattheircitizensreadoff screensintotheirown lives. At the sametime, we mustremainopento creativeways in which these readingscan reshapelocal identitiesand or narrowcast films. In meanings,whetherwith broadcast in the PhilalateNovember2000, forexample,aneditorial delphia Weeklychallenged an Inquirer critic who, respondingto M. Night Shyamalan'sUnbreakable(2000), haddecriedthe grimportrayal of the city thatseems to run films. Instead,the editorialproudly throughPhiladelphia proclaimed:
We're not a city predisposedto brightnessand affirmation. for the sakeof comAttemptsto feign thatwe are,particularly merce,fail miserably. Insteadwe are a city filled with mysteryand magic; a city where the unexplainedand the inexplicablefind safe haven, where storytellerswith refined acumen-like Edgar Allen Poe and M. Night Shyamalan-can sense the secrecy in our moods andcreatestoriesbuiltaround ourwonder. Look around. You can see it. You can feel it. We shouldfeel proudwhen a cameracatchesit. [Whitaker 2000]

Conclusions
to Overtwo decadesago, IanJarviecalled our attention in orand mass media as experiences many facets of film derto opena windowon thecomplexworldof HongKong:
it is the least cinemafor granted; We tendto takethe mundane glamourouspartof the film industry.Yet it is the heartof it and the cinemasof the wouldcease altogether too. Production world could go on forevershowing and re-showingthe immense accumulation of old movies-as happenedin Russia andin Hong Kongafterthe Japanese afterthe 1917 revolution conquest.... Hong Kong's cinemas are not as exotic or quirkyas those of some lands, despite snacks of driedbeef, melon seeds, soybean milk, babies in slings on backs. The Chinesedo not, as the Japanesedo, hiss in quiet appreciation as a of stronglyeroticscenes;they do not treatthe auditorium in their as extension of Israel;they do living room, socializing in a tense moment,as not go in for the loud put-downremark in the Englishspeakingworld;they do not treatthe cinemaas a culturalevent, as in France;they do try, like the British,to sit apart from strangers.Still, the cinemas and what they show-as also whatthey do not show-are a vital partof social life. [1978:71]

Thoseof us who workin cities around the worldall have witnessed intense mass-mediatedtransformation in our in the in in lives or field-if not movies, television or the Internet.Often, however, we take visual culture as the framework for everydaychangesandnormality. In the future, urbananthropologymust recognize more not only massmediabuturban visualexpression, distribution, specandactivereadings as vitalandpowerfulcompotatorship, nentsof urbanlife. Withthese tools, then,we can increase andenrichourunderstandings of contemporary cities, their citizens,andtheirdestinies.

Notes
This paper is based on researchfunded Acknowledgments. by the Council for the International Exchangeof ScholarsFulbrightProgram,the Universityof Pennsylvania,the City Universityof New York, and Bryn MawrCollege. We would also like to acknowledgethe colleagues andstudentswho have discussed these ideas with us, includingpresentationsof partsof the paperat the Society for CinemaStudies, the University of Tarragona,the American AnthropologicalAssociation, and the Bryn Mawr College Visual Culture Colloquium Series. Special thanks go to friends in productionand criticism in Hong Kong and to Louis Massiah, Hebert Peck, and Scribe Video, and to SethaLow as our organizerand editor. 1. A more detailed account of these ethnographicdata on Hong Kong and their implications will appearin Wong and McDonogh (in press); Wong (1997, 1999a) provides a more detaileddiscussion of ScribeVideo.

By responding to his challenge and comparing Hong Kong's urban visual experiences with those of another city, albeit one linkedthroughHong Kong transnationalthese vital partsof ism, we have also soughtto recapture social life, as tools and insights and even shapersof the of two of filmwithinthevisualculture city.Theexamination cities allows of the us to sketch some only contemporary of more implications systematic study, usinganthropological

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2. While these studies are situated primarilywithin film, others have also worked in television, photography,advertising, and the Internetbut are too numerous to review here. Dickey (1997) offers an excellent review. 3. We are leaving aside some issues of continuingtelevision portrayals, which include a more middle-class vision ABC 1987-1991), an attemptat grittyur("thirtysomething," ban realismand the promiseof Bochco's new work. Othercities have developed strong televisual images-Chicago and hospital dramas,Providenceand melodrama(NBC 1999-present), or Baltimoreand crime shows like "Homicide:Life on the Street"(NBC 1993-1999), yet this remainsa distinct and complicated issue. In Philadelphia, such portraitsshould be contrastedwith the role of public and independentstations, below. 4. This film, like other Wiseman works, has had complex local repercussions;for legal reasons, it remains unavailable for purchaseor exhibitionin the GreaterPhiladelphia region. 5. The present Asian American population in the United States and Philadelphia has been shapedby the 1965 immigration act in which nationalquotas were eliminated,after which family chain migrationbecame easier. This contributedto a dramaticincrease of this population and a wider non-Asian awareness of them. Still, these Asians came from different parts of Asia, at differentperiods, and can be enemies of another group in their home countries, like the Vietnamese and the Cambodians.Even within the same ethnic group, for example, a recent Hong Kong immigrantlike Wong is very differentfrom the people who jumped off the GoldenVoyager or a third-generation Chinese American Republicanaccountant in terms of class, history, religion, language, and region. In reading the film, we must see this as a strategiclabel, on the one hand, imposed by mainstreamAmerica, while simultaneously manipulatedby people who consider themselves Asian in America. Very often, this category includes most nonwhite, non-black, non-Latino, non-Native American, and, sometimes, non-Arabs or non-South Asians. Relations with AfricanAmericansareespecially criticalin this film.

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