Old Tales, New Media: The Transmediation of Vernacular Classics in Contemporary Chinese Culture

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The tales of the late-imperial age, novels such as “Dream of the Red Chamber” or vernacular stories such as “Madame White Snake,” are often celebrated as literary masterpieces Yet in the present day, the fame of these classics stems not from the original texts, but rather from the various re-mediations—tv series, computer games, or full-length films—that have transformed these works from classic text into digitized blockbuster. This panel will explore these transformations, not by simply tracing a pre-modern textual genealogy for these current multi-media forms, nor by positing the current, digital forms as inevitable endpoint, but rather by bringing 21st-century medium and late-imperial tale into a creative dialogue: what is the narrative of a game, conversely, can we imagine a text as a game? How are characters developed in text, on stage, or in pixels? How is the visual imagination stimulated in words, illustrations, or a computer screen?
To answer these questions, Eileen Chow considers Monkey’s mechani/magical means of transformation in classic novel and transnational animation. Tarryn Chun examines the boundary between animal and human, digital media and live performance in contemporary theater performances of “Madame White Snake.” Paize Keulemans will explore the politics of collecting 108 heroes in the video-game “Suikoden Card Stories” and Ming-dynasty “Outlaws of the Marsh.” Finally, I-Hsien Wu investigates how the visual imagination has turned “The Dream of the Red Chamber” into MTV music video.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Paize Keulemans, Princeton University

Individual Presentations

• Origins, Forms, Mutations: Animating Monkey’s Tale - Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, Duke University

• Media Transgression in 21st-Century Stage Adaptations of Madame White Snake - Tarryn Li-Min Chun, Harvard University

• Collecting Heroes: Remediating "Outlaws of the Marsh" as a Video Game - Paize Keulemans, Princeton University

• Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Lin Daiyu in 21st-Century Mass Media Production - I-Hsien Wu, The City College of New York

Discussant

• Wai-yee Li, Harvard University