| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺南大學 === 台灣文化研究所碩士班 === 99 === This thesis is aimed at discovering why the movie The Burning down of Red Lotus Temple, adapted from the kung-fu novel The Tale of the Extraordinary Swordsmen, was highly popular in Mainland China and Japan-ruled Taiwan in the early 1930s and fell into oblivion later. Also, it will explore the subtle relationship between the film industry and governmental policies.
After Taiwan was recovered by the Republic of China (ROC) in 1945, the craze for the story gradually revived. Initially, there appeared comic books, which were followed by the TV and puppetry series, with both of them gaining wide acceptance. The successful instances led to the reproduction of the movies based on the abovementioned novel. As a result, the chivalric novel was transmitted through different mass media, generating a continuous wave of enthusiasm.
This research is based on a rich collection of information resources, including various film versions, the seven-word opera script entitled The Lyrics about the Burning down of Red Lotus Temple, the novel The Tale of the Extraordinary Swordsmen along with its research papers, numerous periodicals and TV weekly guides.
The comic books which spread from Shanghai, China to Taiwan caused an alarming number of cases where young students who desired to be immortal left home and went into the mountains to look for sorcerous hermits. Faced with such a crisis, the government banned the comics completely; regrettably, the further development of artistic creativity was strangled. Later, a puppetry version with Chinese lines was produced. However, the series was abandoned at the thirteenth episode because the viewers did not accept its form of presentation. The industry of artistic creativity tends to inch along owing to the policies or restrictions imposed by the government.
Several films have been adapted from the novel in question since its birth; in consequence, they have exerted a lasting influence on Taiwan’s action movies. Their innovative techniques and styles of martial arts are still imitated by their counterparts. Moreover, with the addition of special effects, the audience is attracted to the new action movies. When modern technology is closely blended with artistic creativity, the resultant movies will receive even more applause and leave an inerasable impression on the audience’s mind.
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