From Patricide to Patrilineality: Adapting The Wandering Earth for the Big Screen

Ping Zhu

doi:10.3390/arts9030094

Abstract

This paper discusses how Liu Cixin’s 2000 novella “The Wandering Earth” was adapted into a family melodrama that ultimately reinforces the authority of the Father and the nation-state. It analyzes the complex mechanisms, such as mise en abyme and scapegoating, that serve to condone the patriarch’s power, as well as the intertextuality tying the film to the socialist culture. This paper analyses the social context that foregrounds the conversion from symbolic patricide (breaking the established system) to symbolic patrilineality (integration into the social order) in the film and also discusses the inherent tension between the radical apocalyptic vision offered in the original science fiction story and the cultural industry serving the interests of the established order.

Highlights

This paper discusses how Liu Cixin’s 2000 novella “The Wandering Earth” was adapted into a family melodrama that reinforces the authority of the Father and the nation-state
The first mainstream science fiction film made by the Chinese, The Wandering Earth
The film The Wandering Earth was adapted from the titular novella by Liu Cixin (1963–), who became an internationally renowned sci-fi writer after his novel The Three Body Problem won the Hugo Award in 2015

Summary

From Apocalyptic Sci-fi to Family Melodrama

The first mainstream science fiction film made by the Chinese, The Wandering Earth Common sense and the established authorities are repeatedly challenged throughout the novella, making the text a field of symbolic patricide It is precisely this symbolic patricide—the radical departure from common sense and established social order, as well as the resistance to endorse any human, social, or spiritual authority—that makes Liu Cixin’s “The Wandering. Youth, Liu Qi, back to his family and the Chinese community This radically narrower chronology dominated by the father figures creates a concentrated dramatic space, it serves as an ideological apparatus that induces the viewers’ identification with the present, which is represented as the eternality in the film. As much as this process shows the media industry’s avid support for cultural hierarchy as evidenced in the film’s marketing and publicity strategies that emphasize consumers’ national identity and cultural self-improvement, it invites people to take note of the sophisticated and complex mechanism that has turned the most unlikely text into a validation of the patriarchy

From Patricide to Patrilineality

Patricide

Han daughter Han

Conclusions