Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar

Enchanted Industries: An Ethnographic Study of the Production of Hollywood and Hong Kong Film and Television Entertainment

Overview

Title:

Enchanted Industries: An Ethnographic Study of the Production of Hollywood and Hong Kong Film and Television Entertainment

Speaker:

Dr. Sylvia Martin (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong)

Date:

November 3, 2015

Time:

12:00 nn – 1:00 pm

Venue:

Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong (Map)

Language:

English

Enquiry:

(Tel) (852) 3917-5772
(Email) ihss@hku.hk

Abstract

This talk is based on multi-sited ethnographic research of the Hollywood and Hong Kong film and television industries in which I compared the two cultures of media production yet also looked at shared themes and transnational connections between them. An overarching theme that emerged from both production sites is the role of religion and the supernatural in the labor process. Uncovering accounts of ghost appeasement rituals and psychic consultants as well as other cultural practices on film and television sets, this research challenges perceptions of media production sites as rationalistic, secular workplaces. In demonstrating that post-Fordist capitalist industries are not entirely “disenchanted,” this research contributes to anthropology’s position that the uncertainties of modernity are met with the mystical.

Poster