The Re-orientalised Cosmopolitan Turn in Yangsze Choo’s “The Ghost Bride”

Abstract

"The Re-Orientalised Cosmopolitan Turn in Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride. The magical realist bestseller The Ghost Bride (2013) by Yangsze Choo was adapted into a Netflix original series in 2020. The story revolves around the female protagonist, Pan Li Lan, whose hand has been requested to wed the late Lim Tian Ching, making it a “ghost marriage” or “spirit wedding,” and her, a ghost bride. With the financial woes that the Pan family is facing, Li Lan has to carefully consider this macabre proposal by the wealthy and prominent Lim family. In this article, the authors look at the novel and the Netflix series, The Ghost Bride and argue that it is a form of re-orientalised metropolitan cosmopolitanism, contrived for global consumption in the current global cultural marketplace. Set in 1893, in the colonial cosmopolitan port city of Malacca, the production employs the elite culture of the Peranakan Chinese and re-orientalises it. The critics will, therefore, examine the dynamics of re-orientalism and cosmopolitanism and eventually contend that the production of The Ghost Bride manifests a re-orientalised cosmopolitan turn in depicting a local culture for a global audience. Keywords: re-orientalism, metropolitan cosmopolitanism, magical realism, Peranakan Chinese, The Ghost Bride"