City Without Baseball (无野之城) 2008

In a city where the famous baseball culture plays minority, a group of baseball players too play as minority by choice. Experience teaches these young players how to be free-thinkers how to deal with friendship, love, and sexuality.

A Hong Kong Film directed by Lawrence and newcomer Scud, City without Baseball is a movie that depicts more than just the baseball team’s pursuit to greatness. While the movie does possess a baseball setting and background, the competitive rivalry between different teams is absent. The players in the movie attend regular practices and travel internationally to compete, but no decent baseball match can be seen.

By casting the players as themselves, and basing the script on their personal experiences, City without Baseball reveals its honesty by creating a fictional story based on the dreams, hardship, and enthusiasm of this baseball devotes. The post-modem youth drama takes a very intimate view at how these baseball youths tackle with the different issues that harbors them.

Although the story line provides an interesting subject, the film still appears to be somewhat a mixed bag. With the film directors attempting to embrace a multilayered plotting, the script delivered by each cast obviously lacks pivot and its chaotic treatments to its numerous themes only highlights more the lack of sophistication of the story.

But what’s interesting about the movie is its background and setting, the movie did make good use of Hong Kong’s metro setting including sports details as all iconography does provide an intriguing setting for discovery into concealed sexuality and in searching for true identity. Categorizing as a semi-indie movie and a potential entry for international film fests, City without baseball is an incredible and noble effort. Movie goers, however who are looking for well vivid portrayals of guys playing a game that nobody seems to care will not be satisfied with the movie, as its potential theme clearly is still being marginally explored. The player’s projection showing their determination is trumpeted in English copies as an inviting theme, but that pronouncement seems to be present only in those cover and not in the movie.

Still, the movie still manages to produce an entertaining and edgy scripts, lines, and scenes, and the film’s location is shot enough to sustain an adequate movie theme setting and interest. Furthermore, the actors are also handsome, if not charismatic, and actually manage to establish a strong decent presence considering their non-professional, amateur baseball background.

The last and final detail about the movie is the films troublesome ending, and a reason will likely be viewed only by a curious audience rather than a movie achieving spectacular accomplishment. City without Baseball takes glorious pride in announcing that they are using Hong Kong’s real baseball playing team characters with their original real names, and even goes far as to announce that the movie is based on a true to life experience. In all fairness, credit should be given to its cast and staffs for being brave and candid.

Overall, while City without Baseball opens up as an attempt to story-tell its untold baseball story, understanding the movie’s intention takes some time to figure out.

B.O.Y COTT OF MOVIE :  WE SHOULD PROTEST AGAINST “CITY WITHOUT BASEBALL”!!!

A Facebook group was formed in Hong Kong to B.O.Y COTT the HK movie ‘City without Baseball’

On the Saturday mid-night RTHK gay and lesbian radio programme “We are Family” on May 31, 2008, the hosts invited the director-cum-screenwriter and the two protagonists of the local (Hong Kong) forthcoming movie “City Without Baseball” for an interview. In the interview, the host asked the actors how they would react if one day there is a gay guy who chased them in reality. Then the actors said that they would beat him and insult him with foul language. The actors also expressed that they cannot tolerate gay guys as well as pork chops (i.e. fat, ugly girls). Obviously, what they have shown to us is a proto-hate crime discourse.

(Blog Entry of the related radio programme [in Cantonese]:http://www.faitunes.com/?p=434)

The protagonists’ homophobic expression reminds us the murder of gay guy Lawrence King in California, USA, who confessed his love to another guy in early 2008. In return to Larry’s unrequited love, his classmate shot him at the back of his head. Although California legalized same-sex marriage, it is not the end of the stories of homophobia, homonegativism, hate crime, etc and it does not mean that California is more queer-embracing than any place worldwide like Hong Kong.

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We don’t want the growth of homophobia, homonegativism and hate crime in Hong Kong and worldwide. We have to fight against homophobia and homonegativism. What is more, we have to fight against hate crimes against queer people and we have to create a better world for embracing diversities. We have to show the power of Pink Money. We should not consume products and services provided by and produced by people who express homophobic and homonegative discourse and who would commit hate crime against any group of people in the world.

Although “City Without Baseball” touched the theme of male homosexuality, it is not a film made and dedicated for the advancement of queer politics and activism. It is a pseudo-gay movie which depicts male nude scene for attracting gay and maybe fujoshi audiences. It is a commodification of queer subculture and seemingly fujoshi subculture. It is not helpful for the advancement of equality in the world.