Phallic Symbolism and “Rock
on Fire”
“Don’t you feel gross?” (Nadeki, “Lady Killer”)
“Rock on Fire” features phallic symbolism beyond
the usual, verging on fetishism. In addition to being the senior
investigating officer, living conspicuously alone, cursing out a supervisor,
sporting an unusually severe haircut, riding a motorcycle, driving a red
sports car and killing a male adversary (Ken Lo) with a large shotgun,
Nadeki’s character “Inspector Cindy” has a quite unusual and distinctive
dream sequence that seems to align her persona as masculine. This
dream (actually a nightmare) involves a confrontation between her phallic
police detective character and the monstrous, seductive, castrating figure
of her female adversary “Icy”(played by Mikie Ng). The mise-en-scene
seems distinctively masculine; stripped down to her undershirt and shoulder
holster while pulling an “all-nighter” at the office in the company of
her male colleagues, Inspector Cindy falls asleep at her desk.
A common enough device in HK action films (and
suspense genre films world-wide), nightmare sequences display the passions
and fears of the character in a richly symbolic manner. In “Rock
on Fire,” Nadeki’s masculine attired character confronts her female nemesis
while the latter is both naked and engaged in dominating intercourse with
one of Inspector Cindy’s male police subordinates. Cindy struggles
to raise her handgun, but cannot – rendered literally and figuratively
impotent by the sexually charged scene and gaze of Icy. On the other
hand, when the nightmare is dreamed by the quarry in “Dreaming The Reality,”
Moon Lee’s unconscious yielded a vision of a masculinized Yukari Oshima
(wearing a male police officer’s uniform) who had no trouble raising her
weapon. In “Rock on Fire” Inspector Cindy jerks awake when Icy raises
her weapon, licks it, and fires. Cindy is later almost killed by
her female adversary – who, it may be noted, is cast as Japanese and attacks
her with a wakizashi.
Mikie Ng’s role as Icy is clearly horrifying –
a female slasher, seductive yet brutally homicidal. Every sexual
pairing in this film is associated with extreme phallic imagery or death.
Icy bites out the throat or gouges out the eyeballs of her male partners
directly after coupling. The sight of such body parts directly connotes
castration. Accordingly, in the dream sequence, the nightmare of
the symbolically masculinized detective (Nadeki’s Cindy) is that when she
confronts the seductive and castrating female assassin (Mikie Ng’s Icy)
she too will be rendered impotent.
After escaping being tied up and almost torn limb
from limb, Inspector Cindy – bloody and abject – confronts her adversary
in a battle of dueling excavators! It may also be noted that virtually
the only other female action performer to be depicted operating this specific
type of machine was once again Yukari Oshima – while playing a male gendered
transsexual in “Story of Ricky,” (1992). The symbolism of these earth
moving machines – with their mechanical arms representing virtual bodily
extensions – is somewhat reminiscent of the “mecha” theme of anime involving
massively developed robotic physiques (sometimes piloted by females).
It seems hard to escape the inference that
the conventions of the horror film – improved and sharpened by HK filmmaking
– are discernable in the Cat. III title “Rock On Fire” and that the symbolism
of the Final Girl confronting a female-gendered monstrous adversary is
also markedly present.
