Interaction and Reconstruction of Chinese Mythological Texts and Cinema Narration – the Case of Nezha

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Changjin Li

Abstract

As one of the earliest glorious dawns of human civilization, Chinese mythology, with its symbolic, imaginative and wild narrative carrier, has become a literary form with powerful appeal and vitality, creating a historical precedent for shaping national spirit and personality ideals. The innovation and intervention of emerging science and technology have constantly enabled the expression forms of Chinese classical mythology. Mythological texts are regarded as the frames of cinema narration. Since the Ming Dynasty in China, various mythological texts with Nezha as the motif have been widely circulated among the people and are well – known. In recent years, there are many films based on Nezha, such as Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child and New Gods: Nezha Reborn. With the support of numerous digital technologies, these two animated films have turned the pictures and shots into narrative symbols for constructing imagination space and aesthetic meaning in the cinematographic text. Through the encoding and decoding of symbols, the space of cinema art imagination has been constructed. This paper will take these two films as examples to focus on the innovative reconstruction and modern transformation of Chinese classic mythological texts, exploring how literature affects cinema narration and how cinema reconstructs the traditional mythological texts in the respective contexts, which finally reflects the mutual reflection of digital science and poetic literature.

Published: Nov 14, 2022

Article Details

Section
The Interaction Semiotics of Cinema and Text