Documentary Tibetan Culture Propagation Phenomena

The documentaries on Tibet are used as communication medium for the dissemination of Tibetan culture, and play an important role in promoting Tibetan culture and the exchanges between Tibetan culture and other cultures. However, due to cultural differences, cultural misreading and many other factors, there is still dissatisfactory for Tibet documentary in the dissemination of Tibetan culture. This paper will make analysis on interpretation of the Tibetan cultural content of Tibet documentary since the eighties of the last century, and figure out the positive and negative effects of Tibet documentary on the dissemination of Tibetan culture, so as to propose suggestions on improve the Tibet documentary on dissemination of Tibetan culture.It essentially reviews the course of development of Tibet documentary at home and abroad since the eighties of the last century in the first chapter, pointing out that although there were achievements and breakthrough in development in the past three decades, demerits and shortcomings also existed. The Tibet documentary in China has experienced three stages of development before it stepped into the initial period of prosperity in the eighties of the last century. In the 1990s, it developed further in the content and started to pay attention to the living and the fate of ordinary people. "DV digital recorder" era comes in the 21st Century, and ushers in the development of a new upsurge in documentary. The foreign documentaries on Tibet are geographically and psychologically impressive with the "Tibet complex" and "Shangri-La". Some of the documentaries reflect an objective reality of Tibet's natural landscape and cultural customs; some reflect an ideological bias and influence the conscious and judgments of the audience in Tibetan culture. This paper makes a deep specific interpretation on this issue by analyzing the documentaries on Tibet produced by different people like Americans, Europeans and East Asians.Chapter II mainly discusses the Tibetan culture embodied in the documentaries on Tibet, and interprets Tibetan culture by the power of documentary images. As a complex organism, Tibetan culture concludes Tibetan cultural knowledge, ethnic beliefs, characteristics and the arts, ethics and norms, folk customs and all other abilities and habits that the whole Tibetan society has learned and gained. A large number of Tibet documentaries focus on showing Tibetan culture like social system and organization, normative systems, material product and cultural system, and human geography environmental system. The paper analyzes the works such as A Family in Northern Tibet, Tea-Horse Road, Potala Palace, Walking to the Himalayas, A Year in Tibet, No.16 Barkhor South Street, Celestial Burial, Tibet's Hidden Wilderness-Wildlife and Nomads of the Chang Tang Reserve, The Saltzman Of Tibet and Tibet's Hidden Kingdom. These documentaries on Tibet have greatly promoted the Tibetan culture although they have some demerits and shortcomings at the same time.In Chapterâ…¢, it focuses on analysis of the positive and negative impacts of the Tibet documentary. The positive significance is reflected when the documentaries on Tibet present beauty and enjoyment for audience by the elements of Tibetan culture which is discussed in the In Chapterâ…¡, and Tibetan culture will be further learned by more people, while promoting the exchange of Tibet culture and other cultures. The negative impact comes out of being influenced by cultural understanding and visualized political commentators of the former Soviet Union. Due to this reason, the documentaries on Tibet maintain a mode of commentary coming with images for more than thirty years, influencing non-Tibetan on recognition of Tibetan culture. Tibet documentary in foreign countries keeps a "Shangri-La" impression that was hold by white people in west countries. They use other thinking in modern culture to strengthen Tibetan culture as another unusual culture, and set an obstacle for disseminating Tibetan culture in foreign countries.In Chapterâ…£, it comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to improve the condition of Tibet documentaries on disseminating Tibetan culture in the context of intercultural communication. Based on this consideration, there are measures as following:firstly, the makers of Tibet documentary need to treat Tibetan culture by equality perspective and correct attitude from the perspective of cultural relativism. Secondly, it is a good way learning from successful experiences of abroad for all levels of governments to provide policy and funding to support for the development of Tibet documentary. Thirdly, Tibetan documentary makers require experience of real life in Tibet and get a thorough understanding of Tibetan culture.