영화 ≪美人魚≫: 경전의 해체와 낯설게 하기

Abstract

The story of The Little Mermaid is very familiar to us. However, the 2017 film The Mermaid(美人魚) makes us feel unaccustomed and strange. This paper focused on analyzing how such foreignness was built. First, The Mermaid portrays all the characters in The Little Mermaid but their personalities are altered from top to bottom. What used to be customary and noble were transformed to something comic and even improper, and at the moment when the rigid scripture is deconstructed, Stephen Chow’s unique nonsensical laughs transpire. Second, The Mermaid is filled with the regional culture and sentiment of Hong Kong, disparate from its western version. Without certain knowledge of Hong Kong, such as their languages, Cantonese Chinese and Hong Kong English, celebrities and cinemas, the delicately and furtively placed contexts of satire and laughter cannot be appreciated. This is why viewers from other areas experience unfamiliarity with this film. Third, The Mermaid employs a Chinese mermaid story that is different from its western counterpart. For a better understanding, this paper introduces various mermaid stories indigenous to China, including Classics of the Shanhaijing(山海經) and Guangdongxinyu(廣東新語), as well as Chuanqi(傳奇) novels of Tang dynasty and Liaozhaizhiyi(聊齋志異) of Qing dynasty. Lastly, The Mermaid tells a story that transcends the subject of ‘pure love’, which was the essence of The Little Mermaid. Such environment is an unfamiliar subject from The Little Mermaid. Stephen Chow uses the species of mermaid that we must understand others and embrace the animals and nature.