Study On China's Documentary Films In The View Of Narrative Psychology (1978-2008)

This dissertation mainly puts focus on the study of China's documentary films and the description of the psychology of creators and audience during 1978-2008 from the perspective of the narrative psychology. Generally speaking, during the 30 years from 1978 to 2008, the characters of the creators of China's documentary films assume a track of being continuously self-fission, that is, there has been a development of"self---self-substantial---self-relations---self-narratives",and all these"self"-characters are coexisted instead of being appeared one by one, even though there may have some particular character in some particular period.The dissertation contains 7 parts, including the preface, 5 chapters and the conclusion.The study shows that, each adjustment of the research objects of psychology is definitely sure to cause the current change for people on understanding and accepting of the social life, and the research on the creation of television & films has no exception. The narrative psychology is a viable alternative to the positivist paradigm, and mainly contributes to the study of"human life story"; the documentary films also put the views on the"life story"of human individuals or groups. In this sense, psychology and the creation of television & films have some common characters ultimately for the first time. Many theories and methods of narrative psychology can also apply to the research of the documentary films so as to provide a newly perspective and research method on the study of documentary films, and to make some achievements in this field.In the preface, the author sets forth her position directly on the aims and the significance of the study, that is, the transformation of the study on China's documentary films form the texts to the creators and audience with a new perspective. In the first chapter, the author discusses the relationship between the psychology and the creation of television & films from three aspects and this chapter can be concluded as the essential prerequisite for the following chapters, including the analyses sufficiently on the tendency of the enlarging of the common characters between narrative psychology and the creation of television & films in the view of the narrative mode.In Chapter 2, the authors emphasizes on the background and the theoretical origin of narrative psychology, the objects and targets of the research, etc. It mainly defines the study field which is selected in this dissertation and introduces the fundamental theories for the researchers and creators of documentary films. Firstly the authors expounds the situation of the study on psychology and the relevant self-questioning and adjustment made by the psychologists, which caused the transformation to positivist paradigm on the study of psychology directly; that is, the transformation from the metaphor on mechanism to the metaphor on narrative. Furthermore, this transformation accelerated the mature of narrative psychology and made it an independent school, which turns its targets from psychiatry to human life and emphasizes the construction of healthy souls and harmony life In Chapter 3, the author contributes to the philosophical foundation shared by narrative psychology and China's documentary films---a new epistemology---construction of society, which is a new perspective on the study of social science and human science.On the one hand, the two arguments in China's documentary films come to the end: one is the argument on substantial between the"fabrication"and"non-fabrication"; the other is the argument on essence between the"reality"and the"sense of reality". On the other hand, the new perspective borrowed from narrative psychology provides a series of systematical and operative research procedure and narrative analysis methods so that it has come into the reality that the researchers of China's documentary films have turned their views from the texts to the creators of documentary films. The following study indicates that it is because of the adoption of the new perspective that the author can make a newly analysis and description of psychology on the creators of documentary films during the thirty years from 1978 to 2008, which is quite different from the traditional research aspects in this field, such as the criticism on ideology, the criticism on culture, the research on objects, the research on aesthetics, etc, and draws the track of self-characters creators of China's documentary films in the background of times and culture.The fourth chapter is a research report and the prominent part of the whole dissertation. In order to make the conclusion clear and easy to understand, there is a diagram on"self-characters of creators of China's documentary films"showed in this chapter after making brief introduction of some definitions.Firstly it comes to the illustration of the diagram, including the metaphor on segment of line, reasons of signs in particular times, the development track of each line and the distribution of creators, and puts emphases on the definition on the"self"-characters, such as self, self-substantial, self-relations and self-narratives. Then the author makes an illustration sufficiently and in details from three aspects on the background, the narrative forms and the narrative themes of China's documentary films, and attempts to return to its original condition and construction among the creators, the society and the recorded subjects.At the end of this chapter, the author explores that, after the year of 1995, under the great influence of the amusement of television & films and the consumption of the culture, the creators of China's documentary films had to re-judge the status between the objects and subjects, had to pay more attention to the psychology of the audience, had to reevaluate the narrative character of the documentary films, and as a result, there appears a significant character of self-narrative during this period. The last chapter mainly discusses about the narrative strategies which should be adopted by creators of documentary films from the psychological analysis of audience, for instances, the curiosity, the happiness and the recreation.In the conclusion, the author promotes that the spirit of documentary films in the narrative times should be the ability and the accomplishment of constructing a harmonious life story.Under the background that the narrative has become the root metaphor of study on psychology, each human being's life can be regarded as a process of achieving self-narrative, every human being can be the recorder of own life, and expounds the theme on"harmony and love"in the social context by linking the narrative elements, enriching the narrative space so as to make the plots of the life story positively or calmly, for it is the only tendency for the genuine documentary films.