6 - Choosing the Leader:

Summary

I investigate how disputes over the interpretation of the Basic Law’s provisions on Chief Executive elections are refracted in Hong Kong’s gangster or ‘triad’ films. These disputes became increasingly acrimonious after 1997: Pro-democracy legislators, lawyers, and activists in the territory accused the Chinese government of failing to honor guarantees for democratization enshrined in the constitutional document, while the Chinese government accused the pro-democracy camp of attempting to bring chaos and undermine Chinese sovereignty in the name of democratization. I will examine a cluster of gangster films centered around conflicts over how a new leader in the criminal syndicate should be chosen, and argue that key terms in the city’s election debate are integrated into the films' dialogue and signal a conscious cinematic engagement with the constitutional impasse. I will then draw on the work of Robert Cover to offer an interpretation of Herman Yau’s The Mobfathers (2016; 選老頂) as a cinematic expression of the jurispathic violence, which Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in the course of the election controversy.