ABSTRACT

The Butterfly Lovers, a 2004 animated feature film from Taiwan by Ming Chin Tsai, is an instance of the romantic prototype. It begins with a text and voice-over setting the scene in the Eastern Jin dynasty and explaining that, at the time, women were 'second-class citizens' who could not attend school. Development principles in the production of stories are simply a form of the routines that operate in simulation. Whether the development is a matter of specification or alteration, the function of story developments is constant. Prototypes are generally neutral with respect to medium, economic context, mode of production, and other material conditions of the new or 'realized' work. It is important that some story prototypes recur across a wide range of unrelated literary traditions. The result is a film that in effect challenges standard views of sex and gender identity for its young target audience.