The Reconstruction Of The Popular Culture To The Elite Culture

Television dramas based on novels have always been a hot topic in a society featured by globalization and popular culture. In recent years, Yan Geling, a representative writer of the "New Literature of Immigrants" in contemporary America as well as a professional screenwriter in Hollywood, has attracted great attention from home and abroad, with her novels frequently taken as the prototype of many television dramas and movies, ranging from movies like Siao Yu, The Sent-Down Girl, The Flowers of War to television dramas like Little Aunt Tatsuru and A Woman’s Epic. With her novels ranking among the bestsellers, the television dramas based on these works have also become very popular in recent years.Previous studies center on the novels, yet few ones have ever been undertaken on the corresponding television dramas. Taking Yan’s novel-Little Aunt Tatsuru as a case, this paper starts from the angle of elite and popular cultures as well as ideology and aims to explore the differences between the novel and the television version, the strategies adopted in the revision of popular communication, the infiltration, meaning and inspiration embodied in the ideological discourse.The paper consists of three chapters. The first one focuses on the differences in theme, characters and plots between the novel and the television version. The second highlights the revision strategy used in the television version from three aspects-the expectation of the audience, the dependence on cultural accumulation and combination with cultural industry. In the third chapter, the operative strategy of ideology in the television version is analyzed. In the conclusion, the advantages and disadvantages of the revision are accentuated so as to provide some suggestions for the similar television dramas in the future.