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ziasudraIn about 15 minutes, I’m GOING TO DISNEYLAND!!!
* * * * *
Musing on Hong Kong’s media culture
After two years of J-school, I’ve sensitized myself to media culture. Either that, or I’ve been away from HK long enough to realize just how very different the press here is from the “press” I was taught as standard à la The New York Times style.
My impression of HK’s media is that it’s saturated with tabloids. Lives of the rich and famous, fashion, beauty tips, sex, money… it creates its very own norm of what’s important. Even the newspaper I used to read when growing up is becoming tabloid-like. Now, “standard” newspapers like Ming Pao and South China Morning Post are a rarity and appeal to me like an oasis in a desert of news I don’t care about.
It’s probably why a lot of people turn to TV for their news sources. The daily/nightly newscasts and various cable news networks run according to the straight news format, and many of that are informative. But for someone like me who mainly watches TV for sports and cartoon, I really miss being able to buy a magazine from the newsstand and just read something substantial, not speculations on how substantial Movie Star A’s boobs are.
Upon further thought, I realized that the media hype is necessary. HK’s not a big place. Given its pool of people—going by strict stats—many of the superstars are superstars only because in such a small place, there are relatively more opportunities for someone to make it on stage/screen/radio show. To prevent HK’s stardom from being overrun by the rest of the world, I think it’s a necessity for the media to idolize, almost deify, the city’s show biz people. Singer X is off-pitch every time she performs? At least she’s hot.
What bothers me is not that there is a tabloid culture in HK. Heck, there’s crazy tabloid culture in NYC, from more respectable magazines like People to trashier ones who keep looking for interns from local J-schools. But to have the tabloid culture as the dominant media genre… am I the only one who feels like puking after flipping through 1548 magazines and realizes there’s nothing to read?
There used to be a magazine some ten years back called Breakthrough—a monthly cultural critique journal with an applied Christianity bent. It stopped printing when subscription got too low. What a pity. And other literary or more serious journals just aren’t making it in the magazine kiosks. What influence can they wield when they’re stocked only in upper levels of bookstores?
There isn’t a lack of “culturedness” among HK people. Not when being cultured (knowing English, going to plays/operas, traveling around the world, etc.) is held in high esteem as something to be attained by the successful ones in society. But I feel that underlying all the cultural appreciation is still materialism, still a media- or society-constructed definition of what’s “good” and thus should be aimed for. The same thing exists everywhere, but because HK is so small, the lack of diversity in both press and culture jumps out at me.
At the risk of repeating myself, that’s why I appreciate Breakthrough Press so much. Even though they stopped publishing their magazines, there are still a plethora of books out there that seek to engage in culture while offering a way to simply teach young people in HK to think. I was in their bookstore yesterday and quite a few of their books are workbook-styled, first with essays and narratives about the author’s observations on culture, followed by blank pages for the reader to write down his/her thoughts—with the goal of integrating readers back into culture. It’s sort of like the InterVarsity Press of Hong Kong.
At the core, I'm a fan of thoughtful counterculture. I want diversity and I want depth. I’m seeing neither in HK unless I really dig for it, and I hope that there’ll be a day when they can coexist (as in readily accessible as alternatives) with the majority tabloid culture.
Let me be clear that by “culture,” I’m talking about media culture here, which I more or less associate with a sort of more high-brow, intellectual category of HK’s many subgroups. I’m not talking about the service sector of society like the Boy Scouts of HK here. That, I know almost nothing about.
Musing on Hong Kong’s media culture
After two years of J-school, I’ve sensitized myself to media culture. Either that, or I’ve been away from HK long enough to realize just how very different the press here is from the “press” I was taught as standard à la The New York Times style.
My impression of HK’s media is that it’s saturated with tabloids. Lives of the rich and famous, fashion, beauty tips, sex, money… it creates its very own norm of what’s important. Even the newspaper I used to read when growing up is becoming tabloid-like. Now, “standard” newspapers like Ming Pao and South China Morning Post are a rarity and appeal to me like an oasis in a desert of news I don’t care about.
It’s probably why a lot of people turn to TV for their news sources. The daily/nightly newscasts and various cable news networks run according to the straight news format, and many of that are informative. But for someone like me who mainly watches TV for sports and cartoon, I really miss being able to buy a magazine from the newsstand and just read something substantial, not speculations on how substantial Movie Star A’s boobs are.
Upon further thought, I realized that the media hype is necessary. HK’s not a big place. Given its pool of people—going by strict stats—many of the superstars are superstars only because in such a small place, there are relatively more opportunities for someone to make it on stage/screen/radio show. To prevent HK’s stardom from being overrun by the rest of the world, I think it’s a necessity for the media to idolize, almost deify, the city’s show biz people. Singer X is off-pitch every time she performs? At least she’s hot.
What bothers me is not that there is a tabloid culture in HK. Heck, there’s crazy tabloid culture in NYC, from more respectable magazines like People to trashier ones who keep looking for interns from local J-schools. But to have the tabloid culture as the dominant media genre… am I the only one who feels like puking after flipping through 1548 magazines and realizes there’s nothing to read?
There used to be a magazine some ten years back called Breakthrough—a monthly cultural critique journal with an applied Christianity bent. It stopped printing when subscription got too low. What a pity. And other literary or more serious journals just aren’t making it in the magazine kiosks. What influence can they wield when they’re stocked only in upper levels of bookstores?
There isn’t a lack of “culturedness” among HK people. Not when being cultured (knowing English, going to plays/operas, traveling around the world, etc.) is held in high esteem as something to be attained by the successful ones in society. But I feel that underlying all the cultural appreciation is still materialism, still a media- or society-constructed definition of what’s “good” and thus should be aimed for. The same thing exists everywhere, but because HK is so small, the lack of diversity in both press and culture jumps out at me.
At the risk of repeating myself, that’s why I appreciate Breakthrough Press so much. Even though they stopped publishing their magazines, there are still a plethora of books out there that seek to engage in culture while offering a way to simply teach young people in HK to think. I was in their bookstore yesterday and quite a few of their books are workbook-styled, first with essays and narratives about the author’s observations on culture, followed by blank pages for the reader to write down his/her thoughts—with the goal of integrating readers back into culture. It’s sort of like the InterVarsity Press of Hong Kong.
At the core, I'm a fan of thoughtful counterculture. I want diversity and I want depth. I’m seeing neither in HK unless I really dig for it, and I hope that there’ll be a day when they can coexist (as in readily accessible as alternatives) with the majority tabloid culture.
Let me be clear that by “culture,” I’m talking about media culture here, which I more or less associate with a sort of more high-brow, intellectual category of HK’s many subgroups. I’m not talking about the service sector of society like the Boy Scouts of HK here. That, I know almost nothing about.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-30 07:16 pm (UTC)i feel the same way about the gossip in hk. it's too small. everyone's curious about one another's business.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 08:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-30 11:06 pm (UTC)Have fun at Disneyland! hmm...I should go to the one right near me. (Anaheim is literally the town next to mine)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 08:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-02 05:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 07:51 am (UTC)