For the 5th session of the Interartes & Intermedia Seminars 2022-2023, Kin-wai Chu (KU Leuven, Belgium) will be presenting a paper entitled “A comic parody of Disney’s Frozen theme song”. An abstract and biographical note can be found below.

Respondent: Ana Matilde Sousa (Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa).

This fully online session will take place on January 16, from 3pm to 4.30.

Free attendance via: Google Meet.

Abstract:
A comic parody of Disney’s Frozen theme song 

This article focuses on a close reading of a parodic comic adaptation of Disney’s Frozen theme song ‘Let it go’. “Let’s eat ‘cakes’” (‘cake(s)’ in Cantonese is pronounced as ‘go’), created by Hong Kong comic artist Siuhak in 2014, narrates a story about snacks and delicacies commonly seen in Hong Kong with a brief commentary in response to the city’s politics at the time. The panel background are film shots of the original Frozen singing scenes, and the rewritten Cantonese lyrics serve as the text of the comic adaptation. Frozen’s main character Elsa is replaced by an uncouth panda comic character On On, who is featured in Siuhak’s comic character series Ocean Theatre since 2004.  “Let’s eat ‘cakes’” poses challenges to the media specificities of films and comics and foregrounds the obstacles of parodying English lyrics in Cantonese. The most obvious media challenge is that audio elements can only be represented visually. Besides, changing the original non-tonal and multisyllabic English lyrics into tonal and monosyllabic Cantonese has exemplified some phonological, linguistic and musicological difficulties. I propose that the comic adaptation hinges on intermedially referencing the karaoke medium through (1) displaying re-written Cantonese lyrics as subtitles in karaoke videos, and (2) constructing a visual parallel between the original filmic scenes and parodied comic scenes. Such an intermedial reference can entice readers’ mental reconstruction of the original song melody and simultaneous application of the new lyrics, so that the reader can mentally ‘sing’ or even physically sing the rewritten lyrics. “Let’s eat ‘cakes’” has enriched the ways readers consume comics. The process of closure -- readers’ mentally animating the comic panels in sequence-- is augmented by an additional mental reconstruction of the music that is moderated by the intermedial reference of the karaoke medium.

Kin-wai Chu has recently obtained a PhD at KU Leuven. Her PhD thesis focuses on Hong Kong comics of the 21^stcentury from a transmedia and nostalgic perspective. Her research interests include comics, cultural, Asian and postcolonial studies.