Politico-economic Orientation In Cinematic Representation

Representation is a cultural practice closely tied up with identity and knowledgeand representing the “Other” particularly, in part serves to maintain an identity and asubjective sense of the self within members of the same culture. The Japanese as an“Other” have long been represented in Chinese cinema especially since the foundationof People’s Republic of China, which, by directly providing plenty of symbolicinformation, takes an important role in the formation of Chinese people’s impressionon the Japanese. Yet, the production of films can be affected by political, economicand cultural factors, so do films concerned with representing the Japanese. With thenormalization of Sino-Japanese relationship and the prosperity of popular culture, thecontemporary (since the1980s) Chinese cinema has been displaying a more and moremanifold representation of the Japanese, which actually tends to be the most directand the truest reflection of the Chinese peoples’ feelings towards the Japanese.Nevertheless, behind the manifold representation in the contemporary Chinese cinemalies the clue of nationalistic return among the Chinese for various reasons. This thesisis a systematic and critical study of nationalistic return in representing the Japanese incontemporary Chinese cinema by focusing on the comparison of cinematic worksproduced after the foundation of People’s Republic of China, a qualitative studyaiming at exploring the motivations from the cultural perspective and thepolitico-economic orientation behind such representation.On account of a belief that an effective cross-cultural communication shall befirstly based on the understanding of self and the myths about the “Other” in terms of“cultural consciousness”, interdisciplinary theories covering consumer society, cultureindustry, and Bakhtin’s carnival theory in the field of popular culture studies;representation from the postcolonial perspective; and the political economy, areemployed jointly to form the theoretical framework of the thesis. The present studyaims to answer the following questions. First, how has the representation of the Japanese dynamically yet nationalistically changed in contemporary Chinese cinema?Second, as the Japanese is the “Other” culture opposite to us “self” culture, what arethe cultural motivations for this contemporary turn in representing the Japanese inChinese cinema? Third, behind the screen, what politico-economic orientation incinematic representation that contributes to achieving profits can be drawn from theabove analysis? Based on these three research questions, the author employs theapproaches of case study and literature research to analyze the representations of theJapanese in several classic and representative cinematic works, and their culturalcontext and politico-economic orientation of production.Through critical dissertation, the author completes the study with four majorfindings. Firstly, representation of the Japanese in Chinese cinema (post-1949) can becategorized into three phases with Chinese nationalistic turns: fiends for defeat,friends but being mildly resisted, and foes. Secondly, though the representation of theJapanese has been diversified because of social celebration of popular culture and theaudiences’ taste of secularization against politicization, formularization,collectivization during Culture Revolution in China, victim complex and inferioritycomplex engendered from the humiliated history keep Chinese cinema’s insistence onrepresenting the Japanese as the outside aggressor to inspire the nationalism ofChinese people. Thirdly, more exactly speaking, the nationalistic turn is the return ofnationalism in contemporary China which is ultimately the result of politicalmanipulation but the talented Chinese film artists in modern times manage to exploitcelebrity effect to achieve profit maximization. Fourthly, the de-mythmakingnormalization of the representation is never an easy task but one that still awaitsmulti-disciplinary effort from both China and Japan.