Wong Kar-wai’s Films and the Culture of the Kawaii

Abstract

Since 1988, year of release of As Tears Go By, many academic texts have been written about Wong Kar-wai and his films. Among themes dealt with are 1) Wong's emergence from Hong Kong cinema scene and exceptional status he enjoys within that scene; and 2) similarities between Wong and an extremely wide range of Western directors. The twofold concentration on Wong's Hong Kong origins on one hand, and his compatibility with Western cinema on other, can be explained through Wong's almost unique ability to make films that appear to be equally Chinese and Western, or equally local and global.1 However, in my opinion, any limitation of analysis to dialectics of Eastern and Western elements runs risk of bypassing by real sources of Wong's oeuvre. I am not aware of single study that attempts to integrate Wong in wide, though limited, cultural sphere of modern or post-modern Asia. Stephen Teo points to Wong's Asian literary influences, such as novels of Osamu Daizai and Haruki Murakami. He even sees a film like 2046 [as] living proof of Wong's global and pan Asian strategy (it features stars from all Asian territories mentioned, while device of having these stars speak in their own mother tongues is also part of strategy) (152-53). I want to extend Teo's anticipations and explain Wong's work by not reducing it to selective amalgamation of East and West, but by understanding it as phenomenon flowing out of sphere that must be considered as having culture of its own: sphere of modern Asian culture. By using this approach, I seek to avoid relativism like that expressed by Jenny Kwok who claims that the Third World is so infiltrated with First World images and narratives that it is not possible to identify Third World 'national' symbolic products anymore (22), relativism that affirms that national characteristics do not exist at all. On other hand, I want to avoid essentialism that sees films and all cultural productions as expressions of national culture. Wong's world is neither traditional Chinese one nor globalized or international one, but that of lower middle-class inhabitants of