A Study On The Changes Of National Identity In Taiwan Cinema

"Nationalism", or we can say"national imagination", has turned to be central to film express. When films are in people's entertainment life, they not only own the historical memories and personal life themselves, but also accept the ideological power which can't be stopped, and as the main part of potency, they are being the important implement to structure history. National films are interrelated with approbatory identity; also they should have their wits about the fighting or dispersing power that hides in it. After 1980s, the western put more exuberant diversifiable significance in national films via deducing its non-essence theory. When comes to film development, in order to make the pictures more realistic and arouse viewers'collective unconsciousness, filmmakers will use related procedures, such as the art form, industrial creation and standardized political system, etc., so that films'cultural imagination can develop.As we know, Taiwanese films have its rises and falls at different times in history. And the formation of different types of films has had a significant influence on Chinese-language films. And the Taiwanese, Huangmei Opera films, social realisms, martial arts films, and the romances, were writing a brilliant page in the history of Taiwanese films.Once Taiwanese films were under the coercion to use Japanese dialogue during Japanese occupation, after the recovery of Taiwan, people made Taiwanese films on their own, and the Kuomingtang government produced political education films and opposing Communist films to consolidate regime. Though shifts in power happened, ideological concepts and authoritarian influence exist all the time and even in commercial romance and martial arts films.So we can learn the background of the times and ideology from the high popularity of different types of films which reflect micro politics within nations. The history of nationalistic films is tied to the development of nationalistic history.This paper provides statements about many important historical events in Taiwanese history and the time nodes which have an important influence on populace approval perception. Meanwhile, it centers on Chinese consciousness and Taiwanese consciousness to explain the historical text of Taiwanese films, and analyses the relationship between Taiwanese films and the vicissitude history of whole national identity.National identity and cultural imagination in different times have different meaning for viewers in films. National film not only means produced by a country or a region, it also involves the releasing, playing, viewer, criticism and cultural study. Within the cultural information, social life and individual experience conveyed by images, from micro politics'perspective, it analyses social group's attitude towards ideological authority and the structure of national identity, and discusses discourses of national identity in Taiwanese films by the means of cultural study.The whole thesis is divided into the following parts:The first part is an introductory chapter. The provenance, background and correlative references are reviewed in this part.Chapter I expounds the national identity of the early Taiwanese films. In this part, it directs at the relationship between the films and mainstream thoughts,ie.the national identity of unified ideology. And there're five perspectives to explain national imagination involved in this paper, including the structure of national myth, the influence of government's military education programs, the implantation of decolonizing strategy, spreading the traditional cultural values and the establishment of Taiwanese image.Chapter II elaborates on corresponding changes of national indent of Taiwanese over the period of New Film Movement and Taiwanese new film starts to challenge and doubts about some past official arguments. In order to achieve the double process of image and ideology, it divided into five parts to analyze this period's film, they are the breaking of national myth, the accomplishment of duplicate formulation of individual and nation, the structure of urban-rural cultural significance, the reviewing of colonial history and the intervention of female perspective. Chapter III puts emphasis on Taiwanese film after New Film Movement. Due to the impacts of background and political environment, Taiwanese film tries to refactor its national ideology by blanking the grand narrative national history consciously and expressing differences of ethnic consciousness.The last chapter is the conclusion, summarizing the whole article. The anxiety of identity and defamiliarization might arise under the cognition of"films structure identifications"and evaluating the emergence of sprit of Taiwan from the point of mainland. Still, there's an understandable response to the special historical complexes causing by the scattering of family and country, self-exile and the haze of history .it never gets beyond the defiant appeal to the normative force of the factual during the course of identifying Taiwanese film's current situation. It's recognized that Taiwanese film has its unique features and the whole national identity history endured its process"Structure-Doubt- Digest".Similar to the third world film, Taiwanese film has been destroyed by global consumerism. Though it could change its situation positively, it's hard to get rid of fetters penetrated in Taiwan society inwardly.