Spellbound 意亂情迷：The Mysterious Appeal of Film Classics / Esther Cheung

This book review was originally published in Muse 46 (Nov 2010).
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A Stroll with the Ghosts 與鬼同行: Liu Wai-tong's Photo-poetry Collections Record and Recall / Esther Cheung

This book review was originally published in Muse 42 (July 2010).
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Apocalypse Now 盛衰: John Chan's New Novel on China / Esther Cheung

This book review was originally published in Muse 38 (March 2010).
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Deferred Regrets and Missed Encounters: A Memoir of the Blind 盲點與洞見 / Esther Cheung

This book review was originally published in Muse 36 (January 2010).
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Preface: The Turbulent Voyages of Vengeance / Dr. Esther M. K. Cheung

When you leaf through the following pages of this year’s Comparative Literature Bulletin, you will see how the spirit of revenge has gone through many forms of metamorphosis. From the ancient Hellenic view of divine retribution to contemporary popular modes of vengeance, stories of revenge engage their readers/viewers as much as they consume their creators. Acts of revenge probably embody the strongest emotions ever known to humans; desires of revenge produce a complex matrix of affects where envy, jealousy, indignation, hatred, and love are intertwined with each other.

Preface: The Punch Line in Culture / Dr. Esther M. K. Cheung

Comedy culture is an essential part of any society, just as laughter is an essential part of our everyday life. We laugh during festive times, we laugh on our way to work. We laugh at home, we laugh in the Cultural Centre. We consume so as to laugh, we laugh so as to be consumed. We laugh when the jester falters, we laugh when the festoon cries. We desire the punch line, we forget the punch line. We laugh to “death,” we laugh to be reborn. The comic sees its power in conflicts, incongruities, absurdities, ironic twists and opposites.

With the cinematic trope, Charlie Chaplin once articulated comedy from a temporal point of view, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in a long-shot.” No doubt time changes our perspective of what tragedy and comedy mean. In our own blunders and in life’s many hardships, however, do we not visualize the tragic and the comic as an indestructible pair? Is life not a photograph of double exposure with one image superimposed upon another? Does the tragic not see its own ghostly other in the comic, and vice versa?