Fragile Belonging in Consumerist Modernity: Ethical Disintegration, Family Reterritorialization, and Intercultural Communication in At the End of Daybreak

Purpose: Family protection can become conditional when social standing takes priority over another person’s welfare. This manuscript examines that tension in Ho Yuhang’s At the End of Daybreak, linking market-oriented status pressure to weakened responsibility, renewed family control, communication across social differences, and insecure belonging.Method: The manuscript develops a cross-sectional audience-reception model with five constructs and 25 proposed seven-point indicators. It contains 312-cases and a 28-unit scene summary.Findings: The results report positive coefficients for consumerist modernity pressure–ethical disintegration (β = 0.552), ethical disintegration–fragile belonging (β = 0.337), and ethical disintegration–family reterritorialization (β = 0.502). It also reports an indirect association of 0.180 and an interaction coefficient of 0.161. These values are not empirical confirmation of H1–H5. The narrative interpretation distinguishes restoring family authority from restoring secure belonging.Originality: The contribution is a film-specific conceptual model connecting status pressure, responsibility, family boundary-making, communication, and insecure attachment. It distinguishes textual interpretation from a proposed audience-reception analysis.