The Digital Classicism of the Cantonese Opera Film White Snake

Abstract

This article examines the 2019 Cantonese opera film White Snake as an important case of an evolving “digital classicism,” making use of audience-based digitally produced and transmitted Chinese-language materials, among other sources. The article contextualizes the Cantonese opera film as continuing the tradition of experimenting with the White Snake theme, using the genres of local opera and opera film, and special and visual effects enabled by the newest technology. It then moves to a close reading of a series of danmu, anonymous live comments on the Cantonese opera film trailer posted on Bilibili, as important entry points for the study of audience participation in digital times. The digitally produced “ink painting–style Chinese aesthetics” of the film, its digital breakthrough as a “musical with Chinese characteristics,” as well as various forms of fan and anti-fan digital labor triggered by the film, provide further evidence on the importance of “the digital” as “processes of sense making.” The article concludes with thoughts on what difference “the digital” might be able to make in this long history of representing what has become a “classical” Chinese legend.