Happiness in Cultural Diversity: Mina Shum’s Two Films About Chinese Canada

Mina Shum’s two films, 'Double Happiness' and 'Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity', take up happiness as the horizon of life in their comedic depiction of the Chinese community in Canada. The life of the immigrant is a life in-between. How can its suspended condition be represented? The article analyses the ways in which genre and the self-reflexive, at times experimental use of the cinematic language are combined in Shum’s two films to represent the Chinese immigrant’s life in urban Canada, and it also discusses the cultural implications of Shum's cinematic representation. Drawing on film studies as well as cultural studies, the article investigates the removal of tragedy from the storytelling, the comedic representation of stereotypes of the Chinese immigrant, and some poetical inventions that figure the “here and now” of Canadian Chinese life as a ‘breach’ or “crack in all there is”.