'We are all the same, we are all unique': The paradox of using individual celebrity as metaphor for national (transnational) identity

Abstract

This paper will examine the apparently contradictory public persona of a major star in the Hong Kong entertainment industry - an individual who essentially redefined the parameters of an industry, which is, itself, a paradox. In the last decades of the 20th Century, the Hong Kong entertainment industry's attempts to translate American popular culture for a local audience led to an exciting fusion of cultures as the system that was once mocked by English-language media commentators for being equally derivative and ‘alien’, through translation and transmutation, acquired a unique and distinctively local flavour. My use of the now somewhat outdated notion of East versus West sensibilities will be deliberate as it reflects the tone of contemporary academic and popular scholarly analysis, which perfectly seemed to capture the essence of public sentiment about the territory in the pre-Handover period. It was an explicit dichotomy with commentators frequently exploiting the notion of a culture at war with its own conception of a 'national' identity. However, the dwindling Western interest in Hong Kong’s fate after 1997 and the obvious social, economic and political opportunities afforded by the reunification with Mainland China meant that the new millennia saw Hong Kong's so-called ‘Culture of Disappearance’ suddenly reconnecting with its 'true, original' self. Alongside this shift I will track the career trajectory of one of the industry's leading stars who successfully mimicked the territory's movement in focus from American to local and then regional. The individual became a surrogate for millions and his career became a metaphor for wider societal movements.