Hong Kong Comics: Mass Culture?
Hong Kong Comics: Mass Culture?
Introduction
When I was first given the project topics to study, I decided to write a research paper on local comics without a second thought. As a Hong Kong people, local comics have took an irreplaceable position in my memory. Reading Old Master Q (老夫子) and Ngau Zai (牛仔) in the public libraries was one of the best memories in my childhood. Hence I want to carry out a study on local comics as a remarkable genre of the local popular culture. However, as Ng Wing Yee Ross (2002) said, the research has been done on the local comics is insufficient and usually done by comic lovers. And that implies one of the reasons why local culture being accused as shallow, loose and distracted, we don’t have adequate academic studies to summarize the virtue and fault, and act as a foundation or milestone for the local culture. (Chi Hoi & Craig Au Yeun, 2006) The best way to preserve a culture is to study it and conclude it systematically, so it won’t be buried in the history. Though it is just a short research paper, I hope it can contribute to the local comic industry by defending it from some indiscriminating and stereotyped slanders of being a tumor of local culture. Some local scholars claimed that the local culture has died for few decades, and it was replaced by profit-driven cultural products under mass production. Local comic, according to their classification, is one of the sorts and is accused of being coarse, monotonous and empty. The believers of mass culture theory consider local comics as a commodity massively produced only for one purpose, to generate revenue by fulfilling the social needs of entertainment. The whole story was definitely not told under a theory with selective examples and subjective definition of “mainstream”.
This research paper will defend local comics against mass culture theories by providing generalized examples to confirm the diversification of local comic and its cultural values. Then I will criticize
Introduction
When I was first given the project topics to study, I decided to write a research paper on local comics without a second thought. As a Hong Kong people, local comics have took an irreplaceable position in my memory. Reading Old Master Q (老夫子) and Ngau Zai (牛仔) in the public libraries was one of the best memories in my childhood. Hence I want to carry out a study on local comics as a remarkable genre of the local popular culture. However, as Ng Wing Yee Ross (2002) said, the research has been done on the local comics is insufficient and usually done by comic lovers. And that implies one of the reasons why local culture being accused as shallow, loose and distracted, we don’t have adequate academic studies to summarize the virtue and fault, and act as a foundation or milestone for the local culture. (Chi Hoi & Craig Au Yeun, 2006) The best way to preserve a culture is to study it and conclude it systematically, so it won’t be buried in the history. Though it is just a short research paper, I hope it can contribute to the local comic industry by defending it from some indiscriminating and stereotyped slanders of being a tumor of local culture. Some local scholars claimed that the local culture has died for few decades, and it was replaced by profit-driven cultural products under mass production. Local comic, according to their classification, is one of the sorts and is accused of being coarse, monotonous and empty. The believers of mass culture theory consider local comics as a commodity massively produced only for one purpose, to generate revenue by fulfilling the social needs of entertainment. The whole story was definitely not told under a theory with selective examples and subjective definition of “mainstream”.
This research paper will defend local comics against mass culture theories by providing generalized examples to confirm the diversification of local comic and its cultural values. Then I will criticize