Monkey nostalgia and transcultural adaptation: reconstructing the Monkey King in Australian media

This article examines the adaptation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West within Australian screen culture, focusing on the Australian and New Zealand co-produced series The New Legends of Monkey (2018) and its regional reception in relation to the Japanese television series Monkey (1978). It introduces ‘Monkey nostalgia’ to explain the Monkey King′s enduring cultural resonance in Australia. Drawing on theories of nostalgia (Davis 1979; Boym 2001), adaptation (Hutcheon 2006), and Australian hybrid and multicultural identity (Turner 1994; Ang 2003), it analyses how local screen contexts reconfigure imported cultural texts against Australia's historical transition from the White Australia policy to an officially endorsed multiculturalism. It argues that ‘Monkey nostalgia’ reflects not direct engagement with Asian cultural heritage but mediated longing for a remembered media past, shaped by childhood encounters with Monkey, Australia′s multicultural transformation, and the transnational circulation of Chinese literary and theatrical traditions, Japanese television adaptation, British dubbing, and Australian broadcasting. ‘Monkey nostalgia’ therefore functions as an active meaning-making practice through which Australian media engage with global trends and negotiate multicultural identity. The article contributes to scholarship on Australian screen culture by conceptualising ‘Monkey nostalgia’ as an affective mode of cultural memory that produce a hybrid, selective, and locally meaningful form of multiculturalism.