Notes on the Fantastic in Chinese Literature and Film

Abstract

This paper is a discussion of the fantastic genre in literature and film. I employ the term genre in this paper in two ways. First, I attempt to define the fantastic as a genre of writing through the emblematic form of the zhiguai. Second, I link this genre of writing to fantastic film, a category of genre film that has dominated the market in China recently. One of the earliest forms of fiction in Chinese literature, zhiguai were often contrasted to textually verifiable historic writing. First, I contrast discussions of zhiguai to modern conceptions of the fantastic and Enlightenment and revolutionary conceptions of narrative and history. The zhiguai share some features with fantastic storytelling in Europe, notably the Gothic tale that emerged in the late eighteenth century. Second, I draw links between state intervention in religion and superstition and the early modern classification of fantastic literature and film. State anti-superstition campaigns in the early twentieth century would frame fantastic films as superstitious (shenguai dianying). Third, I discuss how the fantastic has been framed in the contemporary China. The modern and contemporary fantastic in China is a combination of Chinese and Western categories of the real and the supernatural.

Key words： strange stories (zhiguai); superstition (mixin); fantastic (qihuan); genre films