Arguably the global effects on North America film industry after joining in Hollywood in late 1990s, Chow Yun Fat, a well-known Hong Kong film star, had started a new era for Hong Kong film industry in 1980s through films or TV series such as Shanghai Tan(1980), A Better Tomorrow (1986) , City on Fire(1987), All About Ah-long (1989), God of Gamblers(1989) etc. He is unquestionably one of the best star images in Hong Kong film history, not only for his versatility, expressive faces and impressive body motions, or naturally born charisma, but also for his many breakthrough in major Hong Kong film genres.
“ A star image shares the simple desires of the common citizen, such as love and home, while impersonating the possession of extraordinary qualities such as success, talent and charisma.” —-as John Ellis explains. Indeed, Chow Yun Fat uses the extraordinary-ordinary as his framework in most of his film products while at the same time connects and disconnects stars with his audience. The Gamblers series and Gangster series by Chow Yun Fat are most famous for being consistent with the above characteristics. As we have discussed through the class so far, star image, as a medium whose significance came from its close relationship with everyday life, transits its power through familiarity instead of remoteness. Chow Yun Fat successfully bears this kind of link to his audience nearly in all his films or TV series. In addition, the uncommon early year life experience made Chow Yun Fat much stronger in creating the this sort of relationship with audience in his films since this experience usually helped him appeal to audience emotions during 1980s. To understand more about Chow Yun Fat, we also have to explore the social context and intertextual meanings during end of 1970s to the whole 1980s, during which Chow earned his credit for xiaosheng( a fancy term in Chinese Opera referred by Lin Feng in Hong Kong’s modern TV xiaosheng). Thus, for the following discussion in order to address the star biography of Chow Yun Fat, I will begin from introducing the background and social context of Chow Yun Fat to his stardom as a whole in a chronological order. Due to the limit of the space, I might focus much on Chow’s Gangster Series in deep since his Gangster series is most representative in his 30 years career as a great star image.
Compared to his contemporaries, Chow had a relatively miserable childhood. Born in 1955, Chow was raised in a poor peasant family and moved to Kowloon at the age of ten. The extreme poverty soon forced Chow Yun Fat to drop high school and started his career in a local car repairing shop. Meanwhile, Chow’s father illness deteriorated, which gave Chow Yun Fat way more pressure. During 1967 to 1972, Chow kept changing jobs and sometimes did several part-time jobs simultaneously in order to make the ends meet for his family. Due to his humble social status, Chow Yun Fat often got despised and humiliated by the rich during work. However, it is such humiliation combined with other tough life experiences that not only gradually made Chow Yun Fat transit from a innocent and childish teenager to a determinant and hard-working young man, but also provided Chow Yun Fat abundant sources for his later career as a star image.
Although Chow registered for and got admitted to his TVB actor training session in 1972, it was not until the end of 1970s that Chow had his first appreciated work — Shanghai Tan. His first success as a star in Shanghai Tan owed to three major points here: star as a social phenomenon, his naturally born charisma in together with his early years’ extraordinary experience and his determinance. To study the star as a social phenomenon, we have to consider the extensive social context during that era. In the 1970s, the Hong Kong film industry was largely stagnant, mainly for oversupply in the 1960s. In a stark contrast with the film industry, the local TV industry was in a rapid and amazing growth. Mainly due to the reduction in the TV sets price, more Hong Kong working-class families could afford their own TV series at home. In addition, the lack of domestic TV programmes in Chinese mandarin or Cantonese inspired the TV industry and serious demand for TV stardom. Normally in 1970s people had to go to traditional opera theatre to enjoy xiaosheng and huadan employed TV or film character types, but the popularity of TV reduces the necessity to traveling to such kind of opera theatre. Thus, the dramatic growth in TV industry increased the demand for actor called xiaosheng who was a fictional figure represents the double myths of extraordinary good looks and a remote historical period in the old time, but possessed two new ambivalent features since 1970s’ burst in TV industry. Modern xiaosheng during 1970s became to be treated as an explicit sign of the character’s social and cultural identity. He usually had great charisma and sexual appeal while represented a cultured ordinary urban young man. So, xiaosheng, instead of purely mysteric and fictional figure from traditional Chinese fictions, embodied original meanings in that specific era — suggests simultaneously both extraordinariness/ordinariness and remoteness/closeness. Chow Yun Fat , undoubtedly one of the few people qualified for xiaosheng because of his good-looking and sexual appeal to numerous women, earned his fame and success soon at the end of 1970s when Hong Kong main TV culture more and more appreciated his work as xiaosheng. Xiaosheng, like Chow Yun Fat as rising star in 1970s, had begun more and more to be regarded as a unique social phenomenon. Beyond social phenomenon, Chow Yun Fat first achievement as a star also owes to his unique charisma in together with his early years tough life experience as introduced in the previous discussion. Chow Yun Fat had all the necessary properties as a modern xiaosheng, but he had more and more than these properties. His personal charisma, in combination with his early life experience, reflected some unique spiritual elements about society and culture which rarely existed in other actors during 1970s. Romance might exist in most his contemporaries’ work a lot, but Chow Yun Fat’s romance is quite distinct from others. As mentioned by Juliar Stringar , “ The typical xiaosheng often falls in love with ‘new women’ who are ‘independent’ and ‘brave’, ‘smart and intelligent’ and ‘rebellious’. In contrast to the pre-modern xiaosheng who often find females who share their traditional patriarchal values attractive, Chow’s modern xiaosheng often devotes his love to career woman who challenge the traditional male professional domain, such as the magazine editor and business woman…..” The main actress, Feng Cheng Cheng in Shanghai Tan was such a character in point and gave much more edge for Chow Yun Fat to build his romantic star image as well as his special charisma. Moreover, early years experience again allowed Chow Yun Fat to construct his romantic star image much more easier since he had known a lot in the end of 1970s: not only how to act as a promising young man with sexual appeal , but also what to act. In other words, all these experiences made Chow Yun Fat become more versatile in his character in ShangHai Tan since Xu Wen Qiang in ShangHai Tan was a man with many variety of characters. Chow Yun Fat’s image in Shanghai Tan was way more beyond romantic in fact, but it would be better if I address them in together with his other Gangster Series works as a holistic view later before 1990s. Chow Yun Fat’s success in Shanghai Tan was also due to his painful effort through the years both in the TV series and in the real life. Though Chow Yun Fat joined TVB in 1972 and tried everything possible to start his first maiden work, he did not get seriously recognized by the director until the end of 1970s since he nearly knew nobody in TVB. Besides, he was nothing special from other ordinary actors with good lookings. In 1970s, the Hong Kong TV industry was still heavily dependent on the sponsors, most of whom had a huge preference for older and sophisticated actor such as Di Long with great reputation.
Young actors like Chow Yun Fat were often required to play some sort of insignificant roles in TV series. Therefore, a large proportion of young TVB training session members voluntarily left every year in order to find other ways to make a live while TVB seemed to offer little chance for them. Barely people were willing to stay in TVB more than 5 years without any progress. But Chow Yun Fat spent nearly 7 years to accomplish his goal in acting. During the most painful and toughest 7 years, Chow Yun Fat made his best effort to build his relationship network with all directors in public while trained himself and learned a lot from some famous actors in TVB in private. Then year after year, Chow mastered his skills and in the end of 1979 he got his first audition chance in Shanghai Tan, partly for his good luck but mainly for his perseverance being admired by the TVB director of Shanghai Tan. The crew finally decided to make an enormous change to the existing TVB series path which heavily relied on old actors when the audience rating in some TVB series had slipped. The decision was so correct that in a few months Shanghai Tan had the highest audience rating among all the TV series. Not merely in Hong Kong did ShangHai Tan become popular, but also Shanghai Tan started to influence the whole China during the early 1980s. Nearly the whole young generation started to imitate Xu Wenqiang’s image since that time. Chow’s image has started to configure and outlive Chow’s own personal history since that time. If luck had not witnessed Chow Yun Fat’s perseverance, then the honor in Shanghai Tan was the best proof to recognize Chow Yun Fat’s stardom as history and phenomenon.
Unfortunately the following three years were the deepest trough in Chow Yun Fat’s career after the peak. Chow Yun Fat’s star image got largely degraded to cliche and stereotype during this period. Since his success in 1980 ShangHai Tan, Chow Yun Fat had made several sequels, such as Women Heart in 1982 , as requested by TVB and sponsors. All those figures constructed by Chow Yun Fat in the TV series were merely the repetitions of Xu Wen Qiang in ShangHai Tan, a cold-blooded killer with sexual appeal to women. Although most of sequels with initial success, as time went by, Chow Yun Fat seemed to confined to this prototype and stood small chance to go beyond this prototype. Some scholars still believe that the restriction and degraded image came from the stardom as media — multimedia exactly because a star image is vulnerable to such cliche when the social media overly transmitted this image and population relied too much.