The Study On Cultural Discount Of Sino-US Bilateral Film Trade

A particular film rooted in one culture and thus attractive in the home market where audiences share a common knowledge and way of life,will have a diminished appeal elsewhere, as audiences find it difficult to identify with the style,values,beliefs,history,myths,institutions, and physical environment.The phenomenon is defined as "cultural discount" which universally exits in cross border film trade.In the international film trade,the US films have always occupied a dominant position. The US films generally have a low cultural discount when the films are exported to overseas market,whereas the foreign films which are exported to the US market have a high cultural discount.In Sino-US bilateral film trade,the US productions hold an absolute advantage.The cultural discount is one of the key factors to result in the imbalance situation of the Sino-US bilateral film trade.Based on the study of the Sino-US film trade,this paper examines the behaviour,reasons and principals of cultural discount,sums up the experience in reducing the cultural discount in the Sino-US bilateral film trade,and proposes effective communication and marketing strategy to avoid cultural discount and problems that might exist.The first part of this paper is the overview of Sino-US Film trade history which provides a historical view to understand cultural discount.The second part analyzes the cultural difference and proximity between China and America. Cultural difference is an essential reason to cause cultural discount,and culture proximity is the precondition for avoiding cultural discount.The third part specifically examines the cultural discount of American films in the Chinese film market and discusses the Chinese film gatekeepers and audiences which are categorized as the two different aspects that cultural discount occurred.In the analysis of Chinese film audiences,four representative American movies are selected to conduct text and audience analysis in order to understand cultural discounts concretely and intensively.The fourth part examines the cultural discount of Chinese films in the American film market.The methodology is the same with the third part.Based on above studies,the fifth part puts forward the reasons that cultural discount occurred in cross border film trade and the strategy to avoid cultural discount.This paper attempts to rectify the reasons of creation of cultural discount from three aspects: the power relations in cultural field,the cross-border audience characteristics,and the features of film text.On the basis,the communications and marketing strategy has been proposed to avoid cultural discount.The strategy includes film text strategy and propaganda strategy.The film text strategy is to create easy to read film text,to create readable text and to produce proximal text. The propaganda strategy is to rephrase culture connotation,to change culture identity,to emphasize the elements of cultural proximity,and to guide the audience lose sight of cultural difference and positively evaluate cultural difference.The paper on cultural discount not only bridge a gap in the theoretical research on Sino-US film trade and cultural trade,not also are of great practical and valuable significance to improve the capacity of cross-border transaction of Chinese films.