Author(s)

Leyan Pan

Corresponding Author

Leyan Pan

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to adopt Timothy Shary’s attitude which assumes youth film as a genre itself to argue that ghetto youth as one of the subgenres of teen films has its own aesthetics to critically reveal the hidden aspects of class issues through comparing Lawrence Lau Kwok-Cheung’s Besieged City with Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong. Although ghetto youth is treated as low culture because of its subject, it involves concerns of high culture as well. Both films deal with high culture concerns under the cover of popular ghetto youth. Another feature of ghetto youth is that this kind of film often applies certain values, activities, territorial space, styles and art effects to significantly differentiate from the “parent culture”, which is the dominant mainstream culture. Through these rituals, these youth sub-culture films project and reflect distinguished “solution” to the social problems posed upon them. Ghetto youth’s sense of rootlessness in the adult society represented in both films is significantly associated with the condition in postcolonial Hong Kong. Youth films arise as a means of collective solutions to the problems in the society. Thus, the subgenre of ghetto youth is never innocent. It is not only about the puppy love and the immature fighting, but also about the rebellion, the conflict and the imaginary solutions. It is worthwhile to explore the hidden aspects and untold stories in ghetto youth although it often presents “the unpleasant matters” that people rarely talk about such as the anxiety of the repressed lower class, the sense of alienation, marginalization and rootlessness neglected in the dominant “parent” culture.

KEYWORDS

Teen Films, Film Genre, Subculture, Ghetto Youth