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From Killers to Love Hunks: Shifting Images of Mainlanders in HongKong Film

From Killers to Love Hunks: Shifting Images of Mainlanders in HongKong Film

Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/25/2014
12:00 am - 8:00 pm

Location
PSU School of Business, room 490
631 SW Harrison St. --Portland

Dr. Mary Erbaugh dicusses social change in China and Hong Kong as depicted in Hong Kong films. Hong Kong films reflect fast-moving social change. Earlier films showed mainlanders as invading killers or dim, asexual hicks. Everyone wanted to escape to rich, sophisticated Hong Kong. Transitional films of the 1990’s show less threatening mainlanders, especially migrant women. New films show Hong Kong people speaking fluent Mandarin and moving to the mainland to find green space, better quality of life, and gentle, sophisticated lovers. Even mainland gangsters appear as masterminds. Changes in censorship influence this content far less than market expansion into the mainland, the second most lucrative film market in the world.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:
Mary S. Erbaugh, a sociolinguist of China, is courtesy research associate at the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Oregon and adjunt professor at Portland State University. She helped many Hong Kong colleagues revise film subtitles during her 6 years as a professor in the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong.

Sponsored by the Confucius Institute at PSU.
Part of a weekly, free, public program series focused Chinese Language & Culture.

For more info, contact:
The Confucius Institute at PSU
www.pdx.edu/confucius-institute
[email protected]
503-725-9810

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