Research On The Narrative Of Chinese Mainland Movies Since The New Period

Since China has entered the new period,the historical stage from 1978,whether the forms of society,politics and economy or the forms of arts and culture have been changed in various degrees.However,as a branch of art products,movies’ changes of narrative strategies are also occurred after the new period.Its changes present the trend from single traditional narrative strategies to the diversification of narrative strategies,then to the co-existence of diversified narrative strategies and traditional narrative strategies and finally returning to the traditional narrative strategies.This paper summarizes the development history of Chinese mainland movies,the generations and pedigrees of the mainland directors and the narrative characteristics of representative works since the new period.This paper divides the development history of the movies in the new period into four stages and sorts out the characteristics,cause analysis and prospects of the narrative strategies presented in mainland movies since Chinese new period in the layout of First,Second and Third Sections.The Introduction section mainly discusses the reasons and significance of the topic selection of this thesis.The two reasons why this thesis takes the film narrative strategies of Mainland China since the new period as its research object are as follow: On the one hand,“the new period” has been an important milestone in Chinese film history.It opens a new perspective for the film narration research in mainland China;On the other hand,“film narrative strategies” have occupied an important place in artistic expressions of movie,which determines the results of movie productions.Then,the thesis sorts out and analyzes the research status and its related literatures in this field.It generally states the research approaches and methods,including the innovation points etc..In Chapter One,the thesis systematically arranged the categories of movie narrative strategies in the new period of mainland China,by using integration and segmentation categories.Thus,it makes a clear comparison between traditional movie narrative strategies from both content and target points of view.It defines a new movie narrative strategy,and classifies it into “little girl” narrative strategy and “IP” narrative strategy.In this way,the thesis makes an explicit classification of movie narrative categories,and makes a sound foundation for further studies in the following chapters.In Chapter Two,Although the Chinese mainland movie narrative viewpoints of the new period have followed the omniscient and omnipotent strategy,the tendency of changing from traditional patterns to diversified viewpoints appeared at the very beginning of the new period.The changes presented on the grasp of narrative forms lie in: The first stage: movies in this stage follow the classical narrative form and shape characters in the dramatic and intense conflicts.The second stage: integrated with features of modern narrative form,on the one hand,movies inherit the story tradition of sustainability in the classical narrative form.On the other hand,they attempt to abandon telling stories themselves and fill the emotions of the characters in the movies through the appearance of the stories to convey the personal feelings of the movie creators.The third stage: to some extent,movies in this stage ignore the classical narrative forms with the co-existence of modern narrative forms and post-modern narrative forms.On the one hand,movies creators who adhere to the modern narrative forms create movies full of philosophical connotations through insisting in self-expression.On the other hand,inheriting the constant breakthroughs on movie narrative techniques of the movie creators of the modern narrative forms,movies not only possess personalized expression,but also cater to the requirements of the general movie audiences and the trend of taking the commercial entertainment movies.The fourth stage: movies return to the traditional classical narrative forms,but compare with the movies in the first stage,their aims of conflicts and dramatic setting do not lie in highlighting characters but focusing on a interesting story that would attract strongly the general movie audiences.On the medium level of Chinese mainland movie narrative strategies,the thesis points out that it has completed multiple trans-boundary in the aspects of TV plays and digitization.In Chapter Three,point out the presented changes of the narrative time grasped by directors in the four historical stages of the developments of the narrative strategies in Chinese motherland movies.The first stage: linearly programming reasonably the originally experienced time restricted in the movie experienced time which accords with the appreciation habits of the general public and then cinematic processing the temporal distortion based on the core principles of temporal distortion serving for promoting the development of plot;The second stage: breaking the linear narration order of the originally experienced time regarding the personal art concept of the movie creators as the guiding ideology and then cinematic processing the temporal distortion based on the fundamental principles of using characters’ emotion expressing to express the directors’ art concept and emphasizing on the temporal distortion’s service for emotions and feelings;The third stage: following the narrative characteristics presented in the second stage,meanwhile regarding the movie watching habits of the general movie audiences as the principle concerns,gradually returning to the traditional narrative strategies which give priority to the linear expression and conform to the aesthetic habits of general movie audiences.As for the cinematic processing of the temporal distortion,the standard is changed from the entire subjective art cognition of movie creators in the early period to traditional processing way which caters to the general movie audiences and purely serves for the development of story itself;The fourth stage: returning to the requirements of expression technique of narrative time in traditional narrative strategies and cinematic processing the temporal distortion almost completely based on the cardinal principles of catering to the requirements of the general movie audiences.The temporal distortion emphasizes on showing the visual images with marvelous spectacles.The changes presented on the grasp of narrative space lie in: The first stage: displaying the physical space which is familiar to the general movie audiences by the means of objective scene expression to convey social space relationship based on the physical space and revealing the spiritual space implied in the movies which tries to establish a resonance relationship with the audiences after overlapping the both space.The second stage: starting from the subjective feelings of the movie creators,expressing the physical space images and social space relationship which the creators want to express in their subjective mind and striving to establish spiritual space with a sense of resonance with the audiences through the emotional state and intention displayed with narrative space;The third stage: starting from the subjective feelings of the movie creators to express cameral language,reproducing the physical space imagined in the subjective mood of the movie creators in the aspect of the physical picture,almost not considering the aesthetic habits of the general movie audiences for the original forms of the scenes in movies.The establishment of social space is slightly weakened in this stage and establishment of spiritual space of the movie is focused on.Moreover,resonance with the general movie audiences is not pursued in the stage.The fourth stage: the expression of physical space is lifted to an unprecedented height.Both the images of the scenes and the texture of the scenes embody the unique characteristics with rich visual enjoyment or visual impact in high-concept movies.The establishment of the high-level spiritual space of the movie itself has been weakened or removed,but the psychological sensation of the general audiences is emphasized.This paper puts forward that directors as one of the core people of one movie,personal feelings embodied in their movies determine the movies’ cultural levels.One movie can be an excellent work only when it reaches the certain cultural level.Therefore,directors’ feelings profoundly influence the movie’s level.Although there are few Chinese motherland directors who have self-breakthroughs in the aspect of feelings since the new period,we can see the efforts that directors make in the aspect of feeling from more and more movies with humanistic feelings.In addition,the aesthetic requirements of the general movie audiences in the level of movie’s ideology are constantly improved,more and more Chinese motherland directors would achieve the self-breakthroughs in feelings faster and faster.In Chapter Four,the thesis analyzes and explains the traditional or regular movie narrative strategies in mainland China.On this basis,it defines independent movie narrative strategy,which extended out from new period movie narrative strategies.According to its features,it can be divided into elite independent movie narrative strategy and public independent movie narrative strategy.Through comparative analysis and study between these two strategies mentioned above,it can be concluded that new strategies greatly improved the imagination and creativity of movie creation in mainland China.Thus,it abundantly enriched the concrete expressive methods of movie narration.It also enormously expanded the audience of Chinese movies.Meanwhile,the thesis points out the defects of independent movies in mainland China from quality and content points of view,and comes up with corresponding solutions.In Chapter Five,on the factual basis of the characteristics of narrative strategies presented in Chinese motherland movies since the new period,through the core ideology of high-concept movies simple and explicit theme,strong visual impact,market profits as the fundamental purpose and the explanations of the three derived requirements ‘story with one sentence,stars participation,huge publicity and investment’ and on the theoretical basis of the contrastive analysis of Chinese and American high-concept movies in the aspect of features of narrative themes,this paper proposes within the next several years,Chinese motherland movies are very likely to take the high-concept narrative strategies as the main development direction.This paper also divides the development of the high-concept movies into four stages ‘spectacle’ high-concept,‘complex’ high-concept,‘story’ high-concept and ‘feelings’ high-concept.This paper points out high-concept movies of Hollywood have entered the stage of ‘feelings’ high-concept.Although Chinese high-concept movies still stay on the stages of ‘spectacle’ high-concept and ‘complex’ high-concept,from the core ideology of the high-concept stage theory ‘box office markets make or break the movies’,Chinese high-concept movies will surely reach the ‘story’ high-concept stage within three to five years.But it has a quite long way to go for Chinese high-concept movies to reach the ‘feelings’ high-concept stage.In Chapter Six,the thesis analyzes the cause of the different characteristics of the narrative strategies’ development of Chinese motherland movies in the four stages.The section is divided into two chapters.The first chapter discusses the influences of periodic characteristics’ formation of the movie narrative strategies that caused by the directors as the inherent subjective factors for the formation of movies’ styles through the cause analysis of different styles and various narration styles of directors with different generations,types and high-concept on the movie art styles.What’s more,it also lists the characteristics of narrative strategies presented in the movies directed by representatives such as Xie Jin,Wu Yigong,Zhang Yimou and Feng Xiaogang to discuss.The second chapter discusses the impact of these objective factors to the whole movie narrative strategy through the analysis of the changes of the psychological demands of the movie watching behaviors for the general movie audiences and the changes of political guideline and economic policies at different stages.Among them,in the part of political and economic factors,this paper puts forward that in the first stage of the narrative strategies’ development of Chinese motherland movies in the new period,movies are often given enlightenment color.The traditional narrative strategies which are simple and highly readable can attract audiences and complete enlightenment tasks with largest range.In the second stage,because of the impacts of reform and opening-up policy,on the one hand,movie creators find ways to release personal artistic talents of movies,which make the directors devote themselves to the expression of personal movie cognition and neglect the appreciation habits of general movie audiences.On the other hand,as the formidable competitors,TV programs attract the eyes of general movie audiences.Therefore,situation emerges that movie creators and movie audiences separate from each other.Traditional narrative strategies favored by the general movie audiences are marginalized and various narrative approaches are blossoming.In the third stage,because of the impacts of market-oriented policy and economic development,Chinese motherland movie creators in the middle of 90 s to 2002 gradually turn their attentions to the commercial nature of movies.Hence movie expression approaches in these period present two tendencies.One is inheriting the previous personal artistic movie narrative strategies.The other is presenting a tendency of compromising to the market,which means starting applying the narrative approach of commercial movies to organize stories in order to cater to the movie appreciation habits of general audiences.In some sense,it picks up the movie expression approach of traditional narrative strategies.In the fourth stage,with the proposing of cultural industry policy,fast growth of national economy and the box office’s stimulation of the continuous importing of ten blockbusters,Chinese motherland movies which have entered the high-concept era finally compromise to the appreciation habits of the general movie audiences completely for achieving vast profits of box office to consider the classical narrative forms and dramatic linear structures as the production standards of almost all the theatrical movies.The use and selection of narrative space are also for the purpose of satisfying the audiences and completely return to the application of traditional narrative strategies.In the part of audiences’ factors,this paper points out the changes of Chinese motherland general movie audiences’ psychological demands for the movie watching behaviors since the new period and their significances for the movie creators to select narrative strategies.At the beginning of the new period,general audiences watch movies for nurturing spirituality when they are relaxing.They request the movies are simple and readable in narrative approaches and implied with the significance of enlightenment color in narrative contents.In the middle of the new period,because of the social changes and economic development,people’s amateur life becomes rich and colorful.With Televisions and Internet assessing to thousands of households,ways of absorbing spiritual nourishment are multitudinous.Watching movies is changed into pure leisure activities and one of alternative options of leisure activities.To same extent,the decline of audiences makes the movie creators lower the requirements of the movie as a kind of public art.And the theatrical movies with commercial nature become the experimental subjects to renew the narrative approaches and formulate a series of new but relatively poor popular narrative strategies.At the end of 90 s,general movie audiences have defined the movie watching as pure entertainment activity,which makes movies enter the high-concept era of providing pure entertainment enjoyment.Movies return to the traditional narrative strategies which are suitable for high-concept narrations.In Conclusion part,the thesis draws an conclusion that the movie narrative strategies in mainland China which started since the new period has improved in circulation.It shows a winding development state in terms of artistic presentation.As a result,it could reach the height of being perfect in workmanship,exquisite in performance,highly readable and profound in meaning at the movie narrative stage.Thus it will increase the Chinese movie narrative strategies of the new period into a brand new dimension.