Rethinking Fidelity: Adaptations of Literature in 1950s and 1960s mainland China and Hong Kong

Abstract

With a special focus on the theorization and practice of fidelity in 1950s and 1960s mainland China and Hong Kong, this thesis investigates a selection of film and opera adaptations and their contribution to a more nuanced reading of the social, political, and cultural settings that cultivated these adaptations. This thesis argues that, on the one hand, the notion of fidelity was incorporated into the socialist discourse to regulate the production and reception of adaptations. On the other hand, adaptors in Maoist China strategically practiced fidelity or infidelity in adaptation to embody their subversion of politics. By introducing Hong Kong filmmakers’ relatively freer adaptations of May Fourth literature into the discussion, this thesis first hopes to shed light on the institutional differences and interactions between the mainland and Hong Kong cinema, and elucidate the potential and pitfalls that come with the border crossing of adaptation. This thesis employs a Bakhtinian understanding of adaptation but focuses on the issue of fidelity in its practical analysis of adaptation. Chapter One gives an overview of the complexities of adaptation in socialist China and Hong Kong and situates my study in current scholarships. The following chapters focus on representative figures or themes. With Xia Yan’s adaptation theory and practice as an example, Chapter Two looks at how the principle of fidelity was tailored to the Chinese state discourse to regulate adaptations and how adaptors can strategically practice fidelity to critically engage with the regime. In Chapter Three, I shift the focus of the thesis to opera adaptation and discuss peasant writer Zhao Shuli’s painstaking adaptation attempts to adjust to the socialist regime, while uncovering the tensions between artists and the Party-state in the Seventeen Years (1949-1966). Chapter Four addresses the alterations Hong Kong filmmakers carried out when adapting mainland literary classics and the central roles that nostalgia played in shaping these changes. Through theoretically engaging with the notion of border crossing and so-called “unadaptable” texts, Chapter Five presents the cultural and historical significance of adaptation to our understanding of the interconnectedness between the mainland and Hong Kong cinema in the two decades after 1949.