Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures
Abstract
As technology able to film and embody the temporality of the past, media has become mean to the mediate of memory in modern cultural life. Although the advancement of technology benefits to enhance awareness of different cultures and identities, misrepresentations of culture and stereotypical images appeared in media which stopped the time and construct a “Hong Kong” based on collective memory and Nostalgia. This research argues the complexities of the representation impulse in Japan media are inadequately designated the reality of Hong Kong development. Using a wide range of examples from Japan cinema, Japanese literature and Japanese commercials, it considers the reasons why collective memory and nostalgia occupies a different place and seeks different kinds of expressions of Hong Kong in Japanese media. It also compares and contrasts the reality and media representation between the image and symbols portrayed in Japan media and the reality in Hong Kong. And finally the author crucial to analyze the specific cultural and social gaps that appeared in Japan media and contrast with contemporary Hong Kong will help to extend our knowledge and perception to reduce cultural conflicts and schisms and led to the discussion of the possibility of “Virtual Nostalgia”.
Dr Carol POON Man Wai received her PhD (International Cultural Studies) at Tohoku University funded by Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho-MEXT) Scholarship. Carol’s research work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on culture studies, gender studies and globalization theory. She also actively participates in research and application for research funding from external sources. On 2012 she was granted by the Japan Foundation Special Grant on the area of Critical Issues Emanating from Japan’s March 11th Disasters. (￥1,807,400).