A History Of Early Chinese Film Audience (1896-1949)

For a long time, audience has been simply identified as a viewer of one or another movie, the lovers of one or another type of film, and a fan of one star. In the Chinese film industry, the argument about audience from people, scholars and the public is everywhere, from the initial popular magazines, newspapers, books and other the print media, to the electronic media like the television, the radio and the internet. However, both the merry audiences who view the film as a novelty, the audience of learning type who use the films as the tools of understanding the world, the intelligentsia who see the ordinary audience as the vulgar generation before the founding of new china, and the audiences who have been regarded as the object of propaganda and education after the founding of new china, the audience as consumer after the reform and opening up, the historical image of the film audience which is presented in the public opinion and the researchers’work is never changed. They always have been a passive and indiscipline social group, who need to be guided and educated. In contrast, the cultural interest, understanding and information needs they should have as a natural person, has been deleted.This paper is not to demonstrate the subjective initiative of the individual audience, which has been argued carefully in the reception aesthetics of the humanities. But the attributes of the audience as the natural person is the basis of the articles" discusses, so I am very concerned about the trajectory of the evolution of audience’s viewing habits. From the causal viewing habits which are initially linked with the Beijing Opera, acrobatics, folk art and other traditional entertainments, to the consciously restrained habits similar as the recapitulation of the Plato’s cave after the birth of the modern theater, Audience’s awareness of movie has undergone enormous changes with the change of the viewing habits. When I was writing I found, these controversial topics has been discussed over and over again in the history, in all kinds of ways. I think the main reason for this reincarnate incident is the behavioral model of public discourse construct audience and the audience express their desire is not only determined according to the different periods of social events, but also because of the audience as individuals have been similarly affected when they are growing up.by the factors as family, social, ethnic, national, cultural.The purpose of this article is intended to provide a history of the growth of the Chinese film audiences, especially to describe the process how Chinese audience to get to know the film by comparing the controversy history of the movie audience in the earlier years, and by combing the public discourse expression of different historical periods.