The Research on the Hong Kong's Ideological Identity in Days of Being Wild

Abstract

At a time when Hong Kong's ideological identity is diverging from that of mainland China, Days of Being Wild, as a film that profoundly insinuates the problem of Hong Kong's identity, lurks as a root cause and a solution to the problem of resolving the conflict between Hong Kong and mainland China. At present, the ideological research on the film is mainly focused on post-colonial studies, and the value of the film for Hong Kong identity studies is not well understood. This article uses the ideological analysis of the film in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln of Cahiers du Cinéma to analyze the background characters and the ideology of the film, identifying two different attitudes to identity in Hong Kong during the same period: the "Hong Kong Chinese" who accepted the handover and the "Hong Kong Chinese" who accepted the handover. The film's ideological analysis reveals two different attitudes towards identity in Hong Kong during the same period: the "Hong Kong Chinese" who accepted the handover and the immigrants who completely abandoned their "Chinese" identity. On this basis, the article proposes film-making suggestions to bridge the rift between mainland China and Hong Kong: rooting in a common cultural context and reducing the export of ideological prejudice.