Time travel and chronotope: The Lost Empire and The Forbidden Kingdom as adaptations of Journey to the West

Abstract

This essay examines two examples of contemporary adaptations of the Chinese classic Journey to the West (Xiyou Ji) in American popular media: the 2001 NBC TV mini-series The Lost Empire and the 2008 Hollywood film The Forbidden Kingdom. This analysis applies Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of literary chronotope to the study of cross-genre and cross-media adaptations, and explores the relationship between chronotope and adaptation. Following a brief overview of the major chronotopic features of the original text Journey to the West, focusing on the contrast of the “biological time” of Tripitaka and the “magical time” of the Monkey King, an analysis of time travel in the two adaptations demonstrates the significant changes that these adaptations have made by means of altering the chronotope, additionally explicating the orientalist and imperialist logic of such changes. This study represents an argument for the value of the chronotopic approach in the study of cross-cultural and cross-media adaptations.

Keywords:

• Adaptation
• Journey to the West
• chronotope
• The Lost Empire
• The Forbidden Kingdom

Notes

1. The screenwriter, David Henry Hwang, admitted in an interview that The Lost Empire is a “total misfire” on his part and he was ordered by the studio to put a Caucasian lead into the story. See Hwang 2009.

2. See, for instance, Robert Stam’s Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (Stam 1989) and Caryl Emerson’s Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme (Emerson 1986).

3. When Nick meets the Monkey King for the first time, he is informed that he is in the China that was rebuilt within “Emperor Huangdi’s tomb,” while at the beginning of the miniseries Nick himself speaks of the miniature of China that is contained in one of the Emperor Qin Shihuangdi’s tombs. Since Nick and his company were talking about the tombs of Qin Shihuang and his Terra-cotta Warriors, one must take the film to mean that the mythical China is located within Emperor Qin Shihuang’s tomb.