Marco Wan Examines Hong Kong Identity in Insanity, a Film by David Lee (Law, Culture & Humanities)

"Dissent, Cultural Schizophrenia and Hong Kong Identity in David Lee’s Insanity"
Marco Wan

Law, Culture and the Humanities
April 2017, published online

Abstract: How does film capture the zeitgeist of a time of cultural and political conflict? This article investigates the relationship between Hong Kong cinema, identity and dissent in David Lee’s Insanity (2015). Drawing on the notion of cultural schizophrenia as posited by Frederic Jameson and reworked by a number of Hong Kong scholars, it argues that Lee’s film about clinical schizophrenia can be interpreted as a representation of the cultural schizophrenia characteristic of Hong Kong identity at the current time.