From Thunderstorm to Golden Flower: Politico-Economic Conditions of Adaptive Appropriation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower is a product of his adaptive appropriation of Cao Yu’s Thunderstorm. While Zhang persistently asserts the relationship of his work with Cao’s play, in the film he unhesitatingly erases the primary theme of class conflict that sustains the play’s ideological articulation, thus drastically restructuring the social relations of the characters and reconfiguring the temporal–spatial settings of the narrative. Such a seemingly self-contradictory performance of adaptation on Zhang’s part is in fact dictated by the politico-economic conditions of post-socialist cinema in China. By reversing the ideological pursuit of the source work, Zhang has transformed a play resisting the newly emerging capitalist system in the China of the 1920s–1930s into a commercial movie courting the capitalist system that has been revitalized in post-Mao China. Moreover, the differences in terms of content between Cao’s play and Zhang’s film reflect profound changes in time regarding each age’s understanding of not only the nature and function of artistic works but also the social obligations of the creative artist.