ABSTRACT

Hong Kong is increasingly embraced by the larger Chinese culture as its ties with the Mainland in various domains are enhanced. This article addresses an emerging trend of Hong Kong media production: as the local market declines, the Hong Kong television industry and movie industry tend to target and expand into the Mainland market mainly by means of co-production. Co-production as such has resulted in the hybridization of norms, values and ideologies coming from sources in Hong Kong and China. It has also given rise to fundamental changes in the structure and organization of Hong Kong cultural production. We will focus on structural hybridization as such, and illustrate the idea with two cases—the movie Hero and the television drama series The Drive of Life.