Women And Visual Representations Of Space In Two Chinese Film Adaptations Of Hamlet

Abstract

This paper studies two Chinese film adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Xiaogang Feng’s The Banquet (2006) and Sherwood Hu’s Prince of the Himalayas (2006), by focusing on their visual representations of spaces allotted to women. Its thesis is that even though on the original Shakespearean stage details of various spaces might not be as vividly represented as in modern film productions, spaces are still crucial dramatic elements imbued with powerful significations. By analyzing the two Chinese film adaptations alongside the original Hamlet text, the paper attempts to reinterpret their different representations of spaces in relation to their different historical-cultural gender notions.