超越爱情传奇:戏曲电影《梁山伯与祝英台》与新中国的形象建构

Beyond Love Legends: Yue Opera Film The Butterfly Lovers and the Construction of Images of the People’s Republic of China(PRC)

越剧电影《梁山伯与祝英台》展示了20世纪50年代地方戏曲与彩色电影的紧密互动。影片通过对民间爱情传奇与越剧美学风格的再创造,在日内瓦会议期间参与建构了崇尚和平、尊重传统与独立自主的新中国主体形象。《梁山伯与祝英台》改造了以往故事中的“悲情”主题,并通过重塑祝英台这一女性形象,在国内放映期间引发了有关恋爱自由与婚姻自主问题的进一步探讨,成为宣传《婚姻法》的典范。在新中国的政治文化语境中,“梁祝”的故事超越了以往爱情传奇的范畴,成为涵纳民间性、地方性、传统性等多重意义的空间。《梁山伯与祝英台》不仅提供了理解社会主义美学的多元视角,也包含着在冷战语境中重新认识新中国主体形象的方法,更昭示了新中国成立初期文艺建设的开放空间与内在活力。

The Yue opera film, The Butterfly Lovers, shows a close interaction between local operas and color films in the 1950 s.Through the re-creation of folk love legends and the aesthetic style of Yue opera, this film was part of the conscientious construction of images of the PRC that revered peace and respected tradition and independence during the Geneva Conference.The Butterfly Lovers transformed the theme of “tragedy” in previous story.By reshaping the famous female image of Zhu Yingtai this production during its screening in China contributed to public discussions of freedom of love and marrige, becoming a model for the publicity of the Marriage Law.In the political and cultural context of the new China, the story of the Lovers went beyond the boundaries of previous love legends and created a space that contained multiple levels of meanings from folk, to local, and traditional.The Butterfly Lovers not only provided a perspective to understand socialist pluralistic aesthetics, as well as a method to view the subjective images of new China in the context of the Cold War, but also demonstrated an open space and an internal vitality of literary and artistic construction in the early days of the PRC.