Internet Popular Film Review Research In The Context Of Consumer Society

The blooming of Internet popular film review has been seen as a new rise of film criticism in the age of Internet.The Internet popular film review,which is rooted in cultural participation,cultural sharing and cultural consumption,highlights the people’s interaction with film,the people’s cultural productivity,the people’s consumption activity,as well as the people’s desire for cultural power.Based on the theory of"productively consuming",the present study views Internet popular film review as a form of popular culture consuming practice,which is a provoker and circulator of meaning and pleasure.In the context of consumer society,this study investigates and discusses the cultural identity,critical discourse and "bottom-up" cultural power of Internet popular film review.This paper is structured into six sections.Introduction part describes the current development of Internet popular film review,explains the purpose and the main object of the thesis,as well as gives a short account of the theoretical framework and the research method according to the status quo of weakness and achievement on Internet film review.The first chapter investigates the backgrounds of the Internet popular film review in three respects:the film criticism,the consumption ideology and the net media.The second chapter explores the ways in which popular review can serve the subordinated and oppressed groups making meaning and pleasure as popular productivity.Additionally,the characteristics of popular productivity,which are centered on its carnivalesque and sensation rather than on the mind and its sense,as well as the meaning that are relevant to everyday life,are also explained in this chapter.In the meantime,the cyber language,relevance and parody are offered themselves as strategies for the struggle of meaning and pleasure.Chapter Three points out three kinds of critical discourses of popular review.Discourses function not only in the production,but also in making sense of social experience and cultural identity.Based on different discourses,this chapter dissects the identity construction and concludes three cultural identities:cynical second-best,narcissistic indifferents and obsessed excessive viewer.Then the relationship between popular review and professional criticism in power game is discussed.On the one hand,the popular review has break down boundaries of the hegemonic discourse of film criticism;On the other hand,because of differently socially situated people and heterogeneous discourses,the popular review failed equally to account for the differences and potential connections between interior.Therefore,it maintains the conflicts between power and resistance,discipline and indiscipline,order and disorder.The crisis of popular review is fully explored in chapter four.The conclusion section summarizes the thesis and proposes a number of future developments for popular review,in particular the need for fostering independent film critics.As a "productive" consumptive practice,Internet popular review focuses on the living popular productivity,and hence sustains itself in a constant process of reproduction and creativity.With the productivity and resistance,the Internet popular review has rejected and avoided dominant ideology,as well as impacted the authoritative discourse and cultural hegemony in film criticism filed.Nonetheless,it has to continuously act as a "the other" because of the inside heterogeneity and its excessive consumption ideology.