Adapted For the Screen: Modern Chinese Literature And Film

Adapted For the Screen: Modern Chinese Literature And Film Name Institutional affiliations Date Adapted for the screen: modern Chinese literature and film “The obsessed” adapted into “Jo Dou” Adaptation occurs when artists adapt a literary article, which may include stories, poems and novels and give them another genre or even a different medium. Fuxifuxi was a novel written by Liu Heng, and it was written in primitiveness of rural life and also in a noncanonized written tradition. However, it was dialogically and dialectically founded on the modern Chinese literature CITATION Fos13 \l 2057 (Foster, 2013). The Novella Fuxi Fuxi (the obsessed) was later adopted by known international director Zhang Yimou in 1990. The name Fuxi Fuxi was changed to Judou, a film that received an Oscar nomination in 1991 under the Best Foreign Film category. The film also won various international film awards. Zhang Yimou was a fifth generation Chinese filmmaker and had participated in a nationwide intellectual movement which happened in the mid and late 1980s. Jo Dou was also the first movie to be banned by the Chinese government. The banning of this movie aroused a tremendous controversy in the film industry especially in the West and the East. Most foreign and Chinese scholars do not consider the novel Fuxi Fuxi which is the source of this movie but have remarkably relied on the movie itself. The adaptation process was impressive and when well interpreted helps the audience understand the roots of the story. The film and the novel share the same themes even though they have been interpreted differently. This paper is going to look at various themes in the film and how Yimou Zhang adopted and incorporated the thematic and technical element, oedipal complex, an element that had never been known before in the Chinese tradition. Zhang’s western influenced skills and the adaptation process of Jo Dou The 1980s was a period referred to as a cultural self-reflection. Zhang was then introduced and exposed to the western literary trends. These skills enabled the producer to translate works of foreign literature which had been produced by the then young Chinese writers and artists and were considered to have an inferior position in the modern Chinese culture CITATION Jia13 \l 2057 (Jiang & Ivanhoe, 2013). Zhang among other fifth-generation filmmakers criticised these young writer’s structural character, cultural structures, and experiences and compared them with the contemporary radical ideologies and politics. By attacking the traditional way of telling stories and bringing in modernity, they cleared all the obstacles on the path to modernity but had to keep Chinese culture in these productions. Fuxi fuxi /Jo Dou can then be analyzed as having an essential thematic continuity purposed by Zhang who is a producer of the fifth generation filmmaking CITATION Jia13 \l 2057 (Jiang & Ivanhoe, 2013). Zhang left behind a legacy of modern Chinese literature because Jo Dou is one of his works that show how strongly he was influenced by the western writing in the way he exhibits his themes and techniques. Zhang ensured that what he produced in China was as good as that which was created in the west. Jo Dou is a movie that reveals adaptations of modern and contemporary literary works because it has already absorbed thematic and contemporary literary arts. Jo Dou and the oedipal complex Ju Dou is a rare art that showcases oedipal conflict present in the Chinese culture, and it shows how complicated oedipal configurations are in China. The play also shows two oedipal triangles which occur in three generations in two cases of crime CITATION Jia13 \l 2057 (Jiang & Ivanhoe, 2013). Firstly, Tianbai perpetrates one crime unintentionally and unconsciously while he commits the next one consciously and intentionally. When one analyses these two patricides carefully, the two fathers are killed by a child who they consider their son and in the same pool. The first murder, the child accidentally pushes his father into the pool, and he drowns to death while the second one, the child is now a teenager and pulls his fainted father into the pool. Even though his father struggles to come back to life again by holding on to a pole, he hits his hand and makes sure that he is dead. When his nominal dad drowns in the water, the child jumped up with joy because he believed it was funny and he did not know that he unconsciously killed his father. In the second case, Tianbai who is now a teenager knows that he is killing his father. In the movie, he does not show any feelings on his face. With his face lacking any form of expression shows he murdered his father against his will CITATION Fos13 \l 2057 (Foster, 2013). He did it to fulfill his filial duty to his nominal father. In both cases, death occurred in the death pool. The cinematographic use of the dyeing pool was made to show an eruption of oedipal hatred and gives a clear vision to the audience on the bloody and violent nature of oedipal conflict when the red colored water splashes turbulently in the pool when the man struggles for his life. In the Novella, the reader sees Yang Jinshan as an old man who is in his late fifties CITATION Leu \l 2057 (Heng). He cannot have children. Thus he is childless and impotent. He has over the years raised his nephew, Yang Tinquing in his farm. Tianqing in a young man now in his early...