Introduction

For this individual project, Angela wrote a short story about a 23-year-old Hong Kong girl who struggles to find her identity. The protagonist grows up in an upper-middle-class family and enjoys educational privilege and material comfort. Nevertheless, as she enters university and encounters people from different backgrounds, she gradually realizes that unlike what she has always believed - that most of the people in Hong Kong live like her - they are actually categorized into different social classes and hierarchy prevails in the society. She is exposed to the brutality of reality and begins to witness herself becoming someone she is unfamiliar with.

Hung Angela: Posted on Facebook and IG on Feb 14, 2022

Highlights

• This project explores notions of class, social hierarchy and identity in the local context.
• Hong Kong, an international financial center which celebrates capitalism and materialism, is characterized by its propensity to label people according to their economic power.
• The younger generation, who is born into the prosperity of Hong Kong from the 1980s onwards, is influenced by the deep-rooted belief that one’s value and happiness hinge on the class one belongs to.
• How has such belief engendered immense struggle in Hong Kong’s younger generation? Do one’s self-esteem and sense of identity have to be defined by one’s class?

Highlights

• The concept of social class, when understood as simple gradations based on material conditions, refers to social stratification, in which individuals and groups in a society are put into a set of hierarchical categories on the basis of economic power.
• According to Marx, class is defined by one’s relationship to the means of production in a modern capitalist society: the bourgeoisie has ownership and control of the means of production; the petite bourgeoisie has an independent means of self-employment through special artistic or technical skills; and the proletariat sell their labor power to the bourgeoisie to earn wages.

Highlights

Quotes from the story:

“It took her some time, however, to eventually realize that the ferry trip they had that day was not an unpleasant one, for she had indeed enjoyed the sensations of youth and freedom: the sight of the sea, the intermingled smell of an island boy’s sweat and the salty seawater, the sound of the crashing waves, and the humidity of the air. Are not all memories humid, as the Hong Kong novelist Liu Yichang once famously said?”

“Her eyes gleamed like the shiny stars that glittered in the dark night. She whispered to herself, 'Life is not fair.'”

Experience at MALCS

Enrolling in the MALCS programme is a decision I am grateful I have made, as it changed the way I see, comprehend and interact with the world in a way I never envisioned. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in film, culture or literature. Not only has it introduced me to the eye-opening world of comparative literature and literary, cultural and film studies, on a more personal level, it has also inspired me to be a filmmaker - a dream that I am still pursuing and burning for at this very moment.