A Cross-cultural Study On Chinese And American Film And Television Public Service Adverting Of Health

For the perfect combination of image,sound,music and plot,film and television Public Service Advertisement(PSA)of health has proved to be successful and effective in transmitting health idea and advocating healthy lifestyle toward public audience.In Chinese and western culture studies,film and television PSA has become an important cultural phenomenon that scholars are keen to study.A research on Chinese and American film and television PSA of health from cross-cultural perspective will enrich the connotations and significance of cross-cultural theory,and promote the development of Chinese public advertising welfare career.This paper takes Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory and Hall’s High-context and Low-context theory as its theoretical basis and data analysis,text analysis and comparative analysis as its research method.Based on 200 samples of Chinese and American film and television PSA of health,this research is giving analysis and explorations about the health theme,expressive ways and expressive methods between them respectively.The research is conducted from four aspects.It firstly generalizes the similarities of general characteristics and health content on Chinese and American film and television PSA of health.Then it summarizes briefly about the differences between Chinese and American film and television PSA of health in health themes,expressive ways and expressive methods.It further tries to find out the cultural reasons for leading to these differences.At last,it provides suggestions for China’s public welfare career on the basis of the result.It can be seen from the research that Chinese and American film and television PSA of health share similarities in non-profit characteristic,advertising language feature and national traits display,etc.However,they are showing some differences in the coming source of health theme,expressive ways and expressive methods.Chinese government is occupying the dominant place while American organizations,enterprises and individuals are playing important roles in the coming source of health theme.As for expressive ways,Chinese ones are showing implicit,indirect and conservative features while Americanones are presenting exaggerate,direct and relatively open characteristics.For the aspect of expressive methods,Chinese film and television PSA is mostly adopting commanding persuasive ways without plenty of changes of pictures and music while American ones are mainly applying infecting persuasive ways with various changes of color and music.