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Counter-hegemonic Resistance in China's Hong Kong pp 365–393Cite as

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the implications of subaltern Hongkonger’s struggle for a counter-visuality and the increasing incidence of image and visual politics in making of the Special Administrative Region’s subaltern counter-public visible and meaningful. It also briefly addressed significant developments in Hong Kong that occurred as this monograph was being finalized.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The groups were Art Citizens discussed in this chapter and the previously mentioned anti-Moral and National Education (MNE) student group Scholarism.

  2. 2.

    Notable exceptions are Lam and Ip (2011), W.-k. Wong (2013b), and Chow (2013).

  3. 3.

    Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year fair has taken an increasingly political orientation with the participation of many counter-hegemonic fund raising groups selling colorful protest props satirizing and parodying the hegemonic powers. This includes items from the profane—rolls of toilet paper decorated with unfaltering poses of Chief Executive C. Y. Leung’s face—to the amusing—cute “Lufsig” wolf dolls which have become an iconic subaltern sign for the detested official. Indeed, the Lufsig caricature of C. Y. Leung became so popular in online and offline protests in 2013 and 2014. Some protesters posed for pictures with life-sized dolls. Others marched in protests with the doll hanging in effigy. More technically adept dissidents made video games with C. Y. Lufsig as the villain. The kinetically-inclined took to throwing the doll at the chief executive during public speaking engagements. C. Y. Leung’s public relations coordinator attempted to spin the negative publicity by showing C. Y, Leung’s ability to take a joke. He posed the chief executive in a photograph sitting at his desk and Lufsig next to him. The maneuver failed, however, as Hong Kong’s visual mashup community ruthlessly parodied and satirized the attempt to hijack the counter-hegemonic meme.

  4. 4.

    This includes a YouTube video that was released days before the July 1st protest and had received hundreds of thousands of hits before being removed for reputed violation of Terms of Service; ostensibly, for “hate speech” given its negative depictions of mainland Chinese as “locust” among other derisions. References to the Attack on Titan/Attack on China theme can also be found in a comic series called the “War of Hong Kong Independence,” produced in Passion Teen by youth-oriented radical pro-democracy organization.

  5. 5.

    In some ways this also resonates with the earlier mentioned subversive tagging observed at the International Finance Center pictorially imagining King Kong eating the Hong Kong SAR.

  6. 6.

    Referring to the song from Les Misérables

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

    Daniel Garrett

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  1. Daniel Garrett
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Correspondence to Daniel Garrett .

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Garrett, D. (2015). Discussion. In: Counter-hegemonic Resistance in China's Hong Kong. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-236-4_6

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