Film and Constitutional Controversy Book contents
- Film and Constitutional Controversy
- Law in Context
- Film and Constitutional Controversy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Love in a Time of Transition:
- 2 Laughing at the Law:
- 3 Women’s Rights and Censorship:
- 4 The Common Law after 1997:
- 5 A Matter of National Security:
- 6 Choosing the Leader:
- 7 Scenes from a Traumatic Event:
- Coda:
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
2 - Laughing at the Law:
Johnnie To’s Justice, My Foot!*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2021
- Film and Constitutional Controversy
- Law in Context
- Film and Constitutional Controversy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Love in a Time of Transition:
- 2 Laughing at the Law:
- 3 Women’s Rights and Censorship:
- 4 The Common Law after 1997:
- 5 A Matter of National Security:
- 6 Choosing the Leader:
- 7 Scenes from a Traumatic Event:
- Coda:
- Bibliography
- Filmography
- Index
Summary
In Chapter 2, I situate Johnnie To’s popular comedy, Justice, My Foot! (1992 審死官), which revolves around a lawyer defending a woman falsely accused of murdering her husband, in light of the drafting of the Basic Law and passage of the Bill of Rights in early-1990s Hong Kong. I argue that To’s film, which appeared at cinemas a mere three years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, can be approached as a screening of a nightmare scenario on the minds of many viewers at the time: A Hong Kong-style lawyer trying to defend the innocent and maintain justice in a Chinese-style legal system that disregards basic human rights and that is plagued by corruption and nepotism. I will then explore the function of humor in the film to show how Justice, My Foot! repackages anxieties about the sinicization of law into a marketable cultural product for mass consumption.
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- Film and Constitutional ControversyVisualizing Hong Kong Identity in the Age of 'One Country, Two Systems', pp. 46 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021