Should Chinese Literary Masterpieces Be Adapted?

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ELTU 1108G English Improvement Strategies for Reading and Writing Writing Project --- Draft 3 Name: Ricky Wang Topic: Art and Commercial Culture Title: Should the Chinese literary masterpieces still be adapted to TV series? Imagine a scene in which you just got off work and spent leisure time with your teenage son through watching a TV adaptation of Journey to the West - one of the Four Chinese Masterpieces of Literature. As you enjoyed watching the TV series which had been your favorite story since you were a child with your son, he suddenly asked you a question, “Daddy, why does the Monkey King dump the White-skeleton Demon? Is a young pretty woman not good enough for a monkey?” Would you be astonished? How would you react to your son’s question? Actually, this is not an individual phenomenon happening in China in recent years. The current TV adaptations of the Four Chinese Masterpieces of Literature which are deeply rooted in the hearts of Chinese people have aroused intense controversy and criticism in terms of the interpretation and demonstration of the original stories. The mass audience seems to become the witnesses of the devastation of the artistic value of the literary works due to a profit-oriented purpose of TV adaptation which in turn further harms the growth environment for our young generations. Moreover, they are likely to end up with getting bored of watching stereotyped TV series day by day because of the lack of originality in script writing of the overall TV industry of China. From the perspective of the audience, it is certainly exhilarating to recapture the classics through visual techniques, but a critical concern is whether they have truly obtained what they expected from the TV adaptation. In fact, the TV adaptation of Chinese literary masterpieces has tended to concentrate more on earning commercial benefits at the cost
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