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Screen 2006 47(4):407-424; doi:10.1093/screen/hjl032
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved

The KTV aesthetic: popular music culture and contemporary Hong Kong cinema

Brian Hu


  Abstract

The use of pop music in contemporary Hong Kong cinema reflects the wide reach of the entertainment capital's media corporations. Resulting from a history of cross-media symbiosis, the intersemioticity of Hong Kong popular culture creates a network of meanings surrounding singer-actors and their popular songs. This article shows how local films borrow the discourse of stars and songs to create for fans of Hong Kong pop culture an audio-visual affect of recognition and interactivity – a KTV aesthetic. Diverging from film music scholars who theorize pop music in film as either a subset of the classical music score or as an aesthetic form separate from the economics of the film and music industries, this article considers the use of pop music in film from the perspective of a music fan who already has an investment in the song or singer prior to watching the film. The article also intervenes in Hong Kong film studies by arguing for an approach that considers the way cultures of reception shape the making and reading of Hong Kong cinema. Finally, a close reading of Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994) shows how the film's depiction of singer-actress Faye Wong activates meanings from a variety of sources: gossip magazines, musical recordings, karaoke videos.


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