Favoring contemporaries? Why Anthony Wong and Tao Jie caused public outrage due to a documentary

"I just heard my colleague talking about Director Zhang. He didn't think there was anything wrong with him at all, and he complained that it was so hard to make movies." Just as my journalist friend and I were discussing whether we should invite people to respond to the craze caused by "For Me". While Director Zhang was speaking a few words, Huang Jiazheng, the protagonist of "KJ Music Life", wrote an 8,000-word long article about the filming and release of the film. This documentary director whom I have admired for many years suddenly collapsed. My friend didn't specify who his colleague was, but I roughly guessed that it was the god-level senior who would call the person in charge of Cai Feng Film "Hongzi".

Collect intelligence indirectly as the situation develops. Many non-parties such as Tao Jie and Anthony Wong came forward to speak, and the content was biased towards the director's side. Public and online comments generally support the person photographed (the student). I suddenly felt that this time, in addition to being a journalism and documentary ethics course, it might also be related to the generational conflict that has been going on for twenty years in Hong Kong. A textbook example of depriving young people of hope.

(This article is purely based on the topic and has nothing to do with the movie. It is mixed with personal experience and rational discussion is welcome)

Respondent and respondent, unequal power

Li Shen, I am the kind of person behind the scenes who helps reporters interview people during their holidays. With many years of work and reading experience, I don’t like Hong Kong-style interviews very much. I like the writings of Fang Huizhen and Dong Chengyu. The interviews with RTHK’s people in the past were also excellent. In their words, one can read the true temperament of the interviewees, as well as the reporter’s feelings, personal judgment, and even sympathy for the interviewees.

In the Hong Kong interview transcript, you will only read the interviewee's "position" and "viewpoint". After reading it, you will rarely feel that you understand the interviewee. Who is he and what kind of person is he? Hard to know. But at least I know the angle, entry point and perspective from which he commented on the incident. Or they may just gossip and praise the interviewees endlessly.

This is just a cultural difference, not better or worse. As a reader, I would rather get to know the interviewee through the eyes of a reporter. I want to know his point of view and just invite him to write.

The interviewee is rarely on an equal footing with the recorder in Hong Kong. There is an unwritten rule in the industry that the interview transcript must be handed over to the interviewee for review. It's a courtesy. The access scope of the program will be confirmed before starting. Sensitive topics will be discussed during the process. Whether it can be written will be confirmed on the spot. After the interview is completed, the editor has the right to make changes, and the interviewee can only express his or her feelings.

In practice, content is often deleted because the interviewee doesn't like it, especially if it's a well-known person. At this point, the interviewee is your guest, and writing is to serve the guest. Two months after I published an article, the number of views suddenly skyrocketed. The interviewee called my boss and asked to delete some content because "that is not true." I thought to myself: "Scared? You confirmed it and recorded the audio." So should I argue with him? Of course not, I will delete it immediately and apologize. The printed version cannot be deleted. Excuse me.

I remember when I was taking a journalism course, the teacher explained that the interview template was a text about Taichung Mayor Hu Zhiqiang’s thinly combed hair. My memory is a bit inaccurate. The teacher described the mayor as laughing loudly and forgetting it.

Why did the predecessors of the golden age protect those in power?

The biggest controversy in "To Me When I Was Nineteen" was that before the film was released, the protagonists (the subjects) in the film objected to the film's release. They don’t want to look back on their teenage years, nor do they want their past to be discussed by the entire Hong Kong population.

Why are they so resistant? From the reports, it is easy to find that during the entire filming process, they did not cooperate with the filming team equally. Most of them were passively recorded. They tried to resist during the process, but to no avail. It was basically a decade-long incident of bullying.

What does the party with power (the camera crew) say?

I will saturate them with the love of God.

Um? So familiar. It's for your own good?

Many elders, such as the above-mentioned Tao Jie, Huang Qiusheng and even Deng Xiaohua, "stand" on the side of the powerful. Do you think that since the subject is unwilling, he can refuse, not take the photo, or resist... He eats like a fish and quenches his thirst. Since the result is like this, why do you want to make a fuss after it was released and won an award? Why do you threaten people if you want to become famous? Stop the earth from rotating.

(You are making noise and complaining after winning an award. Do you just want to be famous? Block the way.)

They don’t know that weak people cannot resist. They cannot understand and do not understand that when power is unequal, the heroine in the film has no way to resist. This is why documentaries like to focus on students.

The problem comes again. Why can't they understand the female students? Because they use industry standards and get paid to do things, so they can’t say no? Part of the reason. I think they are criticizing the students based on the hard-working and winning method of the ten thousand years of golden age.

"You failed because you weren't strong enough. It's not the director's fault that you were traumatized by the release of the movie, it's because you were too glass-hearted."

Elite monopoly resources

The complaint that "one generation is inferior to the last" is not unique to Hong Kong. Japan labels the post-80s generation as a relaxed generation with low competitiveness and only seeks small fortunes. Taiwan voted in a referendum last year to set the age of adulthood at 18. I have met many adults who are opposed to the amendment. They think that modern 21-year-olds cannot take care of themselves. Is it necessary to become an adult at 18? That's okay.

However, what you say may not be consistent with social reality. After all, it is too late to cultivate until the age of 18.

Even if the older generation criticizes the new generation a lot, they will probably not stop them. On the contrary, they will more or less come up with some policies for the new generation, or simply ignore it and let them develop freely.

What about Hong Kong? Depriving you of your future since you were in middle school. Especially young people who are not from wealthy families.

First, it limits your options for further studies in middle school. If you are eager to improve your living environment through academic qualifications, the three avenues you can choose are medicine, law, and education. Taking the civil service examination is also a way.

You say, no, there are many people who are successful in business and can make a fortune if they have the ability - you are only talking about a very small number of elites. Cash is no longer the old days. People with skills can live and work in peace and contentment. Hard work can make them happy. An age when you can afford to buy a house. After Wang Weiwei, are there any capable people who break through the social structure and carve out a new path?

Then, when you graduate from college, you're saddled with a lot of student debt. Not only that, but I can’t apply for public housing. The two involve living and working in peace and contentment. During the critical period from the age of 20 to 40, one cannot take risks or take a path outside the norm. One must behave accordingly.

Suppose you have just stepped out of society and already have hundreds of thousands in student debt. You work a job that pays just enough to make a living to share the pressure on your family. Do you dare to offend your boss? Once you offend your boss, your livelihood will be affected. It's not as simple as finding another job. You may have to change careers and no longer be able to base yourself on your major.

An old colleague of mine who teaches at school made an appointment with the principal when the appointment was due. He did not consider transferring to another school. When the principal made an appointment, he made it clear: "You know I have a lot of connections in the school district. You won't stay and help me for a year, right?"

The reason why young people are afraid and unwilling to take risks is because vested interests in Hong Kong monopolize resources. For example, when it comes to housing, you are not qualified to live in public housing, and you cannot afford private housing. You work for boss A, and boss A and boss B are friends. If you offend Boss A, will Boss B take you in?

This situation is completely different from the experience of the golden age. In the past, TVB and ATV actors often swapped roles so that they could make movies instead of TV. If you don't have a movie to shoot, you can work as a DJ on a radio station. The DJ couldn't get along, so he started making jokes. Now I tell you, you have to change careers - look at Denise Ho and To Wen-ze.

What should we do once a young person becomes so powerful that even the system and connections cannot stop him?

buy.

Throw money at you, are you great? I buy your advertising time and your YouTube programs, and use my money and your talent to make the programs that vested interests want. You don’t have to, but everyone knows how high the cost of living in Hong Kong is. How long can you stay aloof?

Hong Kong is covered by the golden bell, and young people have no way to escape.

power of the powerless

If you don’t escape, you resist.

The fundamental difference between the social movements in the past ten years and those before 2010 is the fundamental change in the importance Hong Kong people attach to "people." The obvious starting point for "To Me When I Was Nineteen" was the strong demand from directors and principals to pay attention to the feelings of the heroines. They are human beings and their feelings should be respected. This is the biggest progress in the new era.

What about people in the golden age? no. They believe that the value of people lies in "executing instructions", regardless of whether the instructions come from directors, capitalists, or schools. Pursuing justice? Didn't the company pay you any wages? Are there no benefits to you after the documentary is screened? You are famous, right? People give you a chance to perform. How did Chow Yun-fat transform from box office poison to Brother Mark? He didn't care, and told the director, "I'll do whatever I want," and devoted unlimited energy and time to filming "A Better Tomorrow."

This is the objectification of "people". People's feelings do not need to be taken seriously. As long as things are profitable, it does not matter even if the victim is emotionally turbulent.

Doctor Dodo is a psychiatrist. He often tells anecdotes about the hospital at gatherings and talks about patient experiences and stories. The focus is on how he listens to the patient's voice, unblocks his heart, and slows down the effects of drugs. During dinner parties, he would appear to be a good listener, and everyone would be happy to ask him for various mental health information. Over the past few years, I discovered an interesting phenomenon:

No one would feel better after he chatted with someone else, or get the stress-relieving feeling that comes from chatting with friends.

"If I were not a psychiatrist, I would not want to hear these words at all. Why should I care about the patient's feelings? The mortality rate of lung cancer patients is 95%. Do the attending doctors have to care about every one of them?"

What he faced was not the patient, but the illness. There is no need to consider this person, just prescribe the right medicine.

Isn’t it the same view as the golden age? "For Nineteen Years Old Me" and "KJ's Musical Life" are just cases. I just need to find a tool to complete this project. Teachers teach for exams, and if they don’t take exams, why should they teach students?

Most of my contemporaries, those in their early 30s, have similar ideas to those in the golden age. We just complete the task. The means and process of the task are not important, as long as the result is beneficial to ourselves - hello to me, hello to everyone.

Young people are different. Interest is no longer the only requirement they consider. People in the city are more important. They treat "people" as "people", value emotional exchanges with each other, care about urban development, and even "personify" objects. If familiar things disappear in the city, they will feel sad for its changes.

Part of the reason for the nostalgic culture is that young people have deeper empathy and sensitivity than the previous generation. However, in the eyes of the old man, empathy and weakness are synonymous. Take, for example, industrial safety. In 2014, Jackie Chan's boat capsized while filming "Escape", resulting in the death of a senior photographer. It was then revealed that industrial safety in the film industry had not improved since the 1980s. Actors and photographers have been exposed to danger for a long time and have been risking their lives. And it was Jackie Chan who pointed out the safety issues.

Since when making a movie, you can lay down several layers of cardboard boxes and ask action actors to jump from a 6- or 7-story industrial building. You girls were just secretly filmed. What do you mean by crying? (qubi)

The turmoil of not being able to succeed through hard work

I have talked a lot about the old people who sympathize with the young people. There are many of them on the streets in 2019. From my personal observation, the major social movements after 2010 were all fundamental changes in Hong Kong people’s view of “people”. That’s why we shout:

Hong Kong people are different!

Unfortunately, even after several large-scale social movements, the monopoly of vested interests in all aspects still cannot be cut off. They don't feel the need to reflect at all. Regarding this documentary incident, I personally think that the production team still may not understand the reason for the strong response from the public - isn't the same for Eason Chan?

They took it off the shelves simply because they didn’t want the turmoil to spread any further. They didn’t admit their mistake or take it back. Privately, Xu felt, "Oh, I'm being struck by lightning because of my good intentions." Similar situations often happen in daily interviews. We visited an old store with the mentality that this store has a long history, shouldn’t it be known to more people and promote Hong Kong culture to enhance its soft power? Shopkeepers don't necessarily like to be the talk of the town.

I know of a stationery store in the North District. The reporter lobbied many times to achieve his goal, and the owner temporarily relented and agreed. Three months after it was published in the newspaper, the originally quiet store turned into a popular store. The boss was so annoyed that he would rather close down the business. What about the reporter himself? Didn't show up again.

One battle is won and thousands of bones are withered. Maybe we are all just selfish people who take advantage of others in order to accomplish our mission. No one is more qualified to comment than anyone else. Fortunately, Hong Kong people now know how to care about others and support the weak in speaking out. Even if everyone is having a hard time, we will no longer add insult to injury and add salt to the wound. It would have been nice if we had had this personality twenty years ago.

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