| With the deepening of globalization,the national image has become an important symbol for international communication between different countries.Constructing a positive and healthy national image not only demonstrates China’s cultural selfconfidence as a great power but also is a solid foundation for mutual cultural appreciation between China and the West.There are many theoretical discussions and practical results on how to construct a national image in China.With multimedia developing fast today,multimedia such as film has become an important means of national image construction and communication.The construction of national image requires not only the interpretation from self-perspective but also the contrast and reflection on the cognition and acceptance of national image construction through the perspective of other countries.The film Dragon Seed,based on the novel of the same name by Pearl S.Buck,and produced by the American film company MGM,mainly tells the Anti-Fascist struggle of Chinese people.Based on the theory of Multimodal Discourse Analysis,this thesis takes the movie Dragon Seed,movie posters,movie trailers,and movie reviews as research objects.It applies visual grammar,aural grammar and the relationships among different modalities to explain how the Chinese image that meets the needs of Western aesthetic appeal and ideology is constructed through the family image,female image,farmers’ image,and citizen image in the film and analyzes the continuous construction of the Chinese image under the dual perspectives of the United States and China from a diachronic and synchronic perspective,which would be helpful to provide a reference for China going outside and constructing a positive Chinese image.The major findings can be concluded as follows: firstly,the construction of Chinese image in the movie Dragon Seed is a dynamic process,which not only is achieved by the movie itself but also takes the acceptance and recognition of the movie by China and the United States at different times as complementary;secondly,this movie intends to construct a Chinese image in a positive way for commercial and political purposes,but to some extent,it vilifies the Chinese image unconsciously;thirdly,in the 1940 s,the construction and acceptance of a new and positive Chinese image in the movie Dragon Seed was essentially based on the American fantasy of ideal political cooperation countries,and ignored the authentic depiction of the Chinese image.Nowadays,the international dissemination of Chinese image influences the acceptance and recognition of Chinses image by the United States.The stereotype of China revealed in the movie Dragon Seed is reflected;fourthly,in the 1940 s,participating in the production of the movie script,China self-beautified the Chinese image in the movie Dragon Seed and adopted an attitude of overall acceptance of the Chinese image created by the movie Dragon Seed.This attitude has continued to this day,which is to some extent a manifestation of the loss of cultural self-confidence. |
PDF Full Text Request