A Study On The Relationship Between Contemporary Popular Literature And The Adaptation Of Films

In contemporary society, with the rapid development of market economy, the rise of the mass culture, and the ever more maturation of film art, popular literary works not only attract large number of readers, but also capture "the heart" of movies. It becomes “the favorite” of film adaptation. In any case, the adaptation of the contemporary popular literature in films has become a hot phenomenon which cannot be ignored. The contemporary popular literary works’ adaptation to film is a dynamic conversion process. At the same time, it’s also a process of acceptance. It contains reader’s acceptance of the popular literature, film maker’s acceptance of the original works, audience’s acceptance of the adapted films, as well as the re-acceptance of the original work being adapted and so on. Therefore, this paper tries to study the acceptance activity of the contemporary popular literature works from the perspective of their receivers. This thesis is divided into three main parts as the preface, the main text(the first chapter, the second chapter, the third chapter), and conclusion.The preface firstly introduces the background of contemporary popular literary works’ adaptation to film and the significance of this topic selection. It provides a general review on the reception aesthetics,; besides, it also gives a summary on the research status of popular literary works and those works adapted in films. Then, it offers a brief introduction of the innovations and the major research questions of this thesis.The first chapter of the main text shows that the popular literature is the very adaptation object. The first section focuses on film adaptation of the contemporary popular literature. Through the comparison and analysis of "popular literature", "Internet literature", "popular IP" and so on, it tries to define “contemporary popular literature works”.The contemporary popular literature works in this thesis are those works with extensive and firm audience base, with popular, legendary, entertaining and best selling qualities. They are literary forms of popular novels as major genres. In its mode of propagation, the Internet is the key medium. And from the legal and cultural senses, it belongs to literary text class, which is labeled as re-transformable and re-creative popular intellectual property(IP). The second section analyzes the reasons of why it could become the favorite of film adaptation. Firstly, the strong operability of mechanic generation(the theme and the conveyed emotions of contemporary popular novels can cater to the psychological expectations of readers and audience; further, its strong sense of footage and dramatic plot also cater to people’s tastes). Secondly, it originates from the drive of commercial value. Thirdly, it’s because of the embarrassing bottleneck of the original works and the rapid expansion of demands from audience.The second chapter is about the film adaptation of contemporary literary works--the recipient’s multi voice chorus. The first section talks about the readers of popular novels to audience of adapted films-- the "unchanged" and "changes" of recipients. It mainly discusses the normality and transforms from the pioneer readers of contemporary popular fictions to the audience of adapted films, as well as their acceptance methods.The common ground of the “readers” and “audience” is that they are both the recipients of public narrative arts. Further, they both expect the identification of “intimate friends”; however, they both have to make some compromise to some extent during the process of being accepted. On the other hand, the expectation horizon undergoes transformation and reconstruction from the readers of popular literary works to audience of adapted films. In the second section, the writer analyzes respective special interpretation groups(implied readers and target audience, the directors of the film, the film critics, the spokesman of the mainstream values, such as The State Administration of Radio Film and Television and so on.)The third chapter is mainly on the effect of acceptance, for adaptation is a double-edged sword. First section analyzes the lurking crisis under the adaptation boom-- the mixed quality of the good and the bad, the insufficient development of the original work caused resource wastes, the screenwriters who are subject to the impetuous market atmosphere resulted in lacking of originality, the irrational audience are pursue and admire Kitsch, etc. The second section tries to propose strategies to cope with these problems. Follow the Hollywood mode and integrate industrial chain; promote the originality and adaptability of popular literature creation,we call for sincerely creations; see the popular IP hot with reasonable attitudes. In other words, critics have to shoulder their professional responsibility; at the same time, censor division should also introduce relevant grading policy with the purpose to promote the categorization and minute differentiation.