Beyond Language: the Postmodern Poetics of Ang Lee’’S Adaptation of Lust/ Caution

Beyond language: the postmodern poetics of Ang Lee’’s adaptation of Lust/ Caution
Shaoyan Ding

Abstract
Based on Robert Stam’’s notion of filmic adaptation as a cultural critique and through a detailed analysis of the postmodernist styles of intertextuality, dissolving the history, parodic representation, and the body narrative in the filmic text, this article argues that Ang Lee’’s film Lust/Caution (2007) adapted from Eileen Chang’’s fiction Lust, caution is a re-creation embedded with subtle and significant cultural politics. It can be seen as an intellectual endeavour to problematise the ideological assumptions of Self and the Other, history, identity and nationalism, to deconstruct the multiple forms of power that have enslaved human beings, women in particular, and to demonstrate his hope for equality, tolerance and coexistence in human society. In a word, Ang Lee’’s cinematic adaptation, going far beyond Eileen Chang’’s representation of private experiences, is an intellectual process of cultural poetics that subverts the mythic language of nationalism and national identity. Keywords: adaptation, body poetics, history, identity, intertextuality, nationalism, parody

Introduction
Adapted from Eileen Chang’’s short story Lust, caution ( Lust/Caution has created heated debates among critics within Chinese cultural circles since its release in 2007. Articles (Dai 2008: 92––93; Lee 2008: 157––192;

Shaoyan Ding is affiliated to the Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou. [e-mail]
ISSN 0256-0046/Online 1992-6049 pp. 88––101 © Critical Arts Projects & Unisa Press

25 (1) 2011 DOI: 10.1080/02560046.2011.552212

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Beyond language: the postmodern poetics of Ang Lee’’s adaptation of Lust/Caution

Chinese people’’ while destroying morality and the justice of Chinese nationalist text inscribed with the signs of fashion, identity and the nostalgic remembrance of Shanghai in the 1940s (Dai

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