TV Dramas: Bordercrossing, modification, and transactionand Hong Kong TV dramas, as seen in Narita Rikkon and Till When Do Us Part, respectively.
The Hong Kong version demonstrates that the female spouse has to rely on her ex-husband
for economic stability, while in the Japanese version the male is reluctant to sell his apartment,
concerned that his ex-wife would not have a place to live. In both dramas the divorced couple
continue to live in the same apartment in order to save money and to develop their own careers.
Money is a major concern in a romantic relationship. Such a modern sense of marriage includes
suppression of irrational emotion, sensibility, and mentality. These stereotypic characteristics of
a capitalist society are equally featured in the Hong Kong version after its modification from
Japan’s version.
Tokyo is known for being highly competitive and for its hectic life, and hence city dwellers
can show indifference. When Hong Kong TV dramas have modified Japanese dramas, the uncar-
ing attitude among colleagues in the workplace is also replicated on the Hong Kong screen.
For example, in the Japanese TV drama With Love, a creative person in the advertising field meets
an ordinary office lady on the Internet by accident. They communicate with fake identities and
fall in love afterwards without knowing they would run into each other in their daily life. They
face similar hardships and distress and unfold themselves to each other online. The modified
version in Hong Kong, Web of Love, talks about a passionate salesman being cheated by selfish
co-workers, who only finds his real relationships online. These examples imply that in a capi-
talist society people tend to protect themselves from being harmed and refrain from developing
an intimate relationship in real life. Cultural homologies found on TV are not just a mediated
discourse; local modification of a TV program extends and reinforces the capitalistic values from
Tokyo to Hong Kong.
Bordercrossing and coproduction
Compared with local modification, the bordercrossing of a TV program involves a more direct
implantation of foreign values into a place where the program is broadcast. A special case can
be seen along the border between Hong Kong and China (Fung 2008), as Hong Kong serves as
a window for China to approach modernity. What flows across the border as Hong Kong TV
is being watched in China are information, ideologies, consumable goods, popular images, and
worldviews.
Audiences in Guangzhou, the nearest biggest city to Hong Kong, are especially susceptible
to the capitalist ideology being demonstrated in Hong Kong TV dramas. Guangzhou audiences,
however, do realize that such presentations of materialistic ways of life in Hong Kong from
these bordercrossing signals are unrealistic, because they are unable to experience and actualize
the mode of consumption in their own context. From a critical perspective, the programs from
Hong Kong serve as a pseudo-world for audiences in China (Fung 2008). It is in fact from the
Hong Kong TV shows that Chinese audiences are connected with global trends. Hong Kong is
perceived as a cultural intermediary providing cultural interrelatedness, or the “global acumen”,
to ideologically and information-closed China (Hannerz 1989).
Fung (2008) nevertheless revealed that Chinese audiences are not completely passive, because
they develop their own reading strategies. As China’s economic and social development improves
and the country is able to produce more of its own TV programs, the popularity of Hong
Kong-produced bordercrossing TV programs is actually diminishing. In the long run, Hong
Kong’s cultural “invasion” through bordercrossing TV might be hampered by China’s own ris-
ing economic power. When a bigger market is in the backyard, it is still likely that Hong Kong
will think of more bordercrossing programs to plant there. Inevitably, Hong Kong TV dramas
have to be produced in a way that is not too contradictory with the state ideology of China.