Representation of females as victims in Hong Kong crime films (2003-2015): perspectives from One nite in Mongkok, Protégé and The stool pigeon

This study examines the representations of females as victims in award-winning Hong Kong crime films, One nite in Mongkok (2004), Protégé (2007), and The stool pigeon (2010), which were recognised in the Hong Kong Film Awards in the period following the 2003 signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the Mainland government. Using a textual and critical multimodal discourse analysis approach, it analyses the narrative, visual and audio elements to uncover representations of female protagonists' victimhood. This study sets the first benchmark for understanding filmic representations of gender in the post-CEPA era, which can then be compared with earlier Hong Kong films. This study argues that female victims in the selected case studies are represented as being from the underclass and who suffer from physical and mental violence exerted by male perpetrators. The films metaphorically reflect a broader context of female submission and male dominance in a patriarchal society and an anxiety over the growintg power of women in a capitalist society in which underclass women are reduced to commodities that are exchanged among aggressive male gangsters. Significantly, however, this unjust victimization of female protagonists also operates as a catalyst to motivate sympathetic male protagonists who have romantic involvement with them to make better moral decisions.