The Cultural Study Of The Visual Image In The Movie2012

The breadth and depth of cross-cultural communication has gotten an unprecedented expansion by the rapid development of the global movie and television media industry. Movies as one of the most effective way for cross-cultural communication take more and more important task to communicate the culture of each country. The Hollywood movie plays absolutely strong role in the cultural communications of movies, which should be in an equal way. It not only occupies half of the movie box office in China, but the American culture and values it contains has also become increasingly penetrated into the daily life of the Chinese audience, which makes a subtle influence for their lifestyles, consumption patterns, as well as social and cultural psychology.The thesis takes the visual image as the core. It uses relative opinions of Recognition Theory, Convention Theory and Mental Construction to interpret cultural connotations of the movie2012from the four aspects religious belief, hegemony theory, axiological outlooks and moral norms deeply and systematically, to see how Hollywood movies spread its culture with a strong visual effect. And through the study of the skill how to express the cultural connotation in the movie2012, Chinese movies can get some useful materials about using movie visual images to spread Chinese culture all over the world as well as to do some help in achieving a successful cross-cultural communication.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter describes the significance and the purpose of this study and gives a brief overview of the main content of the movie2012.The second chapter is literature review. The first section briefly summarizes the previous study done on the aspects that video works transmit culture. The second section introduces theories and opinions used in this thesis, including the visual communication theory, religious belief, hegemony theory, axiological outlooks and moral norms.The third chapter is the cultural study of the visual image in the movie2012and it is also the core content of this thesis. This thesis only selects three representatives of the visual image in the movie to make a cultural analysis. They are the doomsday, People’s Liberation Army and steamer tickets. The forth chapter mainly describes the culture carrying of the visual image, analyzes American culture implied in the movie2012, points out American’s real attitude of other countries and reveals the movie producer’s real reason and purpose of doing such practices.The fifth chapter explores how Chinese movie makers should learn from the experience of the movie2012and how to use their works to spread Chinese culture over the world. This is also the true significance of the study lies.