Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile

3 - Teaching Song of the Exile in the Diaspora: Minor Cinema, Transcultural Literacy and Border Pedagogy

3 teaching Song of the Exile in the Diaspora: minor Cinema, transcultural literacy and Border pedagogy As Hong Kong cinema continues its ascendency into the global film circuits, Hong Kong films are increasingly incorporated as key texts in the disciplines of cinema, cultural and media studies in Asia and the West. The feminist art house style of Song of the Exile is often used as a counterpoint to the popular genres of swordplay, martial arts and heroic action. In introductory subjects, the film can teach core concepts such as ethnicity, migration, acculturation and assimilation. In more advanced subjects, it can explore the social construction of identity and its role in shaping intercultural communication. This chapter continues the emphasis of the previous chapters on the diaspora by mobilizing the diaspora as a key site for pedagogical considerations. It shows how Song of the Exile cultivates a transcultural literacy that challenges the hegemonic currency of neoliberal multicultural education. As a practice of radical critical pedagogy, transcultural literacy addresses the diaspora through the film cultures of minor cinema and the critical epistemologies of border crossing. ● ann hui’s Song of thE ExilE 90 This chapter is framed by my own experiences of situated pedagogy (Lather 1991; Sharma 2006). A situated pedagogy provides the possibility of putting to use the resources developed by the theoretical approaches in the practices of the classroom. It is constrained by the broader institutional frameworks and specific learning contexts in which it operates. I began teaching Song of the Exile in 1998 in a subject I designed on Hong Kong cinema. It was taught as part of the second and third year core subject offerings in the cultural studies programme at a university in Australia, offered biennially and cross-listed in other programmes such as media and communications, Asian studies and cinema studies. Although subject development has evolved through the years to incorporate the burgeoning field of Hong Kong film studies and ameliorate the pressures of liberal arts curriculum reform, two aims were maintained in the design of the module. One has been to approach postcolonial Hong Kong cinema as a type of border cinema characterized by an industry and a critical practice that have emerged out of its border politics with China, the colonial West, the neo-colonial transnational as well as its own evolving and contesting local. Another aim has been to design a subject that can challenge the pluralism of the multicultural curriculum. It was, and still is, the only subject in the programme and the faculty that examined Asian cinema. I was required to teach ‘the official transcripts’ of the field but was motivated by the need to establish the conditions for reading the dominant texts and master narratives differently. Hong Kong cinema, as a site for examining alternative modernity, became the main critical device in the design of the subject. Alternative modernity provided a platform to decentre Western modernity and the experiences of Hollywood and European cinemas. It also provided the vocabulary for understanding the self-presencing of the cinema and its emergence as a result of contradictory and disjunctive postcolonial forces. I wanted students not only to know the cultural, political and social histories of Hong ● teaChing Song of thE ExilE in the Diaspora 91 Kong and its cinema, but also how, as border cinema, Hong Kong cinema functions as a signifier for their own contemporary global taste formations and consumption practices. I also wanted them to explore how Hong Kong cinema’s relationship with the West and in Asia can aid in the understanding of Australia’s own border politics with Asia. As the postcolonial border has become synonymous with reconceptualizing the world in our contemporary times, border pedagogy became a belated and self-reflexive critical practice that has helped to develop the curriculum. This chapter uses feedback from thirty students in 2008 to show how pedagogy implicit in postcolonial Hong Kong films about border culture not only creates the conditions for rewriting the cultural politics of the border between Asia and Australia, but also provides a materialist approach to engage critical debates in global popular culture. The topic for the week that screened Song of the Exile focused on diasporic cinema and the cultural politics of diasporic identity. Hong Kong cinema was introduced as a diasporic cinema through its role in maintaining and negotiating culture. After the screening that preceded the lecture, students were given additional questions about the...