A Comparison of Chao-Chen Chung’s Novel Lu-Pin Flower and the Film of the Same Name by Yang Li-guo

• Main Authors: Chin-Yeh Tsai, 蔡金葉
• Other Authors: Sheng-Feng Weng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42999061084465298996

碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 台灣文化研究所 === 99 === These days film adaptations of literary works have been drawing intellectual interest and becoming a tendency. Among the most prominent is perhaps Yang Li-guo’s (楊立國) adaptation of Chao-Chen Chung’s (鍾肇政) novel Lu-Pin Flower (《魯冰花》). To examine the two different forms -- novel and film-- as well as how both presented the story, the thesis uses a variety of critical approaches-- textual analysis, induction, and comparison, for instance -- to explore and compare the social phenomena presented in the printed book and on the screen that came out at different places in different times. The thesis also looks at how the two forms represented social- and moral-decline issues of the time such as poverty gap, parent-child tensions, educational problems, election cheating, power struggle at school, and so on. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 presents the research motivation, literary review, methodology, and the research areas. Chapter 2 succinctly introduces the social backgrounds of the time in the original and in Mr. Yang’s film adaptation, including politics and economy, education and elections, words and images. Chapter 3 compares the differences between the original and the film as to how both dealt with issues such as family life, poverty gap, parent-child relationship, gender awareness, the decline of the prodigy painter A-min, the people’s awakening, and so forth. Chapter 4 highlights the differences between the novel and the film concerning school life, educational environment, interaction patterns between principles and magistrates, power struggle, and teacher-student relationship. Also focused in this chapter is the critique of art education about a trial for an art competition. Chapter 5 draws a conclusion of the research. Apart from preserving the storyline of a literary novel, a commercially adapted film can be spiced up by a great deal of up-and-down plots, leading and supporting characters, and special audio and visual effects. This can be reinforced by appealing commercial marketing strategies so that a film adaptation can stimulate the audience to read the original and, in turn, to drive them to the movie theater, thus boosting their appreciation of films. From a scholarly perspective, it is worth doing research on such kinds of novels and films.