The Politics Of Contemporary Movie Criticism In The Context Of De-politicization:A Research About Chinese Film Criticism Since The 1990s

The political nature in contemporary film criticism originates from what Fredric Jameson called Chinese film as Third World texts; also, it is closely related to the identity of intellectuals as Third World. In the meantime, the political nature must be considered in a depolitical context since the 1990 s.As an important tendency in the realm of ideology and culture in China since the 1990 s, the de-politicization and Politics aren’t a relationship which offset each other. On the contrary, the de-politicization is a new Politics in itself which showed in the realm of ideology and culture. The de-politicization can be divided into two levels: de-socialist politics and de-traditional politics. The former includes de-class, derevolutionary, de-nationalism, etc, the latter includes de- national tradition, demoralization, etc. All these different aspects show not only depolitical tendency, but also political demands. A lot of film criticism trends that dominated since the late 1990 s show the dual orientation. The dual orientation reflected the depolitical dialectics which requires abandoning one-dimensional understanding of this conception.The criticism of modernity concerns the construction of modern subject; also, it takes part in discussions about modern space construction in Chinese film since the 1990 s. It puts the emphasis on traditional criticism and national character criticism by the criticisms of Xie Jin’s films, the fifth generation and the sixth generation. A rethinking of nationalism has become a hot topic of discussion in film criticism in this new century. With the advent of films masterpiece of humanity in this new century, the criticism of modernity rethinks of the theory of class, the values of heroism and traditional values. From these topics it could be seen that the dual orientation of de-politicization and politicization is a dialectical unity.The post-colonial criticism chooses the fifth generation as the critical object. It shows the operation model and cross-cultural strategies of the fifth generation, identifies writing routines of self-orientalized, forced them to abandon familiar model and to change their courses. All these affected the direction of Chinese film on certain level, dissolved western center theory that prevails in the social circumstance since the 1980 s. But the criticism thought fall into a disturbing trend: extremely de-national identity. For some critics,it has become a way of criticizing Chinese-centered ideology, deconstructing the power relations between mainstream culture and ethnic minorities or marginal groups.The post-revolution criticism conforms to the trend of de-politicization by its derevolutionary tendency since the 1990 s. It is divided into three main parts: firstly, to reinterpret the early revolutionary films; secondly, to analyze the writing mode of parodying, reconstruction or inverse revolutionary narration; thirdly, to find new revolutionary narration or simulated revolutionary narration. To supplement this, the final part of this chapter focuses on the revolutionary films and controversy triggered by these films.The analysis of ideological criticism focuses on three pressing areas: Firstly, the criticism of the Theme Movie; secondly, the attention to bodies and desires so as to show restraints on our desires and ideology instruction on bodies; thirdly, the attention to relationship between ethics and politics, such as Wang Hui’s criticism to Xie Jin’s films. On this basis, this chapter focuses on the criticism to criticism trends itself so as to point out that ideological criticism tends to interpret morality as the consequences of ideology interpolates, the consequences will be demoralization.Feminist criticism keeps a close eye on the following topics since the 1990s: to reinterpret the films of 17 years; to pay attention to women director and their film work; to criticize female directors’ female theme in the new period. At last, the depolitical tendency of feminist criticism shows up in the fact that feminist tend to screen out all the dominant discourse which led to an intense conflict with national discourse and revolutionary discourse; Meanwhile, Feminist criticism shows a trend of de-ethics.