Lust Caution Analysis

The following essay is going to argue that dissemination is a better trope for describing the intertextual relationship between Eileen Chang’s novella Lust Caution and Ang Lee’s film adaptation Lust, Caution. First, the essay will clarify the definitions of interpretation and dissemination, and use various examples from the novella and film adaptation to illustrate how dissemination is a better trope for describing the intertextual relationship between Eileen Chang’s novella and Ang Lee’s film adaptation.

Interpretation in its very core means to explain, reframe or demonstrate one’s own comprehension of something. In the case of film adaptation of a literary source, interpretation refers to the display of the director’s own understanding of what is explicit and shown in the text, putting his comprehension of the text into filmic form. Interpretation assumes that the meaning within a text is solid and static, and that specific meaning is generally perceived in the same way regardless of contexts

Yee was not pronounced until the later part of the story – the jewelry store scene where Mr. Yee’s unguarded smile captured her heart and she thought to herself that he really loved her (Chang 39). In the novella, Chia-Chi was mostly an attentive spy dedicated in her revolutionary cause and little was revealed about her personal romantic sentiments towards Mr. Yee, not even her monologue said much about her romantic entanglement with him. This helped showing the progressive change in Chia-Chi’s sentiments, providing a closer look into her psyche. Instead of jumping from a devoted spy to the dramatic realization of Yee’s love in the novella, the ‘Wandering Songstress scene permitted the audience to get a glimpse of her genuine love for Mr. Yee before the jewelry store scene (the near-end of the novella), so her change of feeling towards Mr. Yee was more palpable at an earlier stage, as well as more gradual and