A Contrastive Research On American-Chinese Cultural Identity From Perspective Of Mass Culture

Along with the economic reform, Chinese mass culture burgeoned and flourished."Super Girl"is one of the most remarkable culture events in the domain of mass culture in recent years. The appearance and development of"Super Girl"accompanies with the rise of mass culture and it reflects the main features of mass culture. Meanwhile western mass cultural product especially the American mass cultural product"American Idol"entered China and influenced Chinese mass culture. Even worse is that it has produced massive impact on the identity of national cultural and cultural independence in China. Cultural identity between the Chinese and the American with contrastive cases analysis from perspective of mass culture is a new area of the thesis. The thesis can help to deepen and make up for the deficiency of mass culture theories, to enrich the applicational experience and theories of mass culture. It can also help to realize the crisis or the lost of cultural identity and rebuild the cultural construction.On the framework of mass culture the thesis compares the Chinese mass culture with that of the America by applying case analysis and contractive analysis. The main cases are"Super Girl"and"American Idol". The thesis generalizes behaviors of cultural identity crisis of college students which Chinese and American making-star TV programs bring, and discloses deep reasons for the cultural identity crisis from following aspects: Americanization and cultural diversity, conditions of the two countries, the development of the mass media and cultural values of college students.The thesis finds the commons of Chinese mass culture through analysis on"Super Girl"and"American Idol": commodity, entertainment, commonness, popularity and fashion and reliance on mass media. Meanwhile, because of Chinese particular cultural and historical background the mass culture in China takes on particular characteristics such as class discriminination and Americanization. Culture is an important factor in shaping identity; the thesis discloses reasons of Americanization and figures Chinese crisis of cultural identity by Americanization, in addition summarizes tendency of Chinese cultural identity. Based on the situation and foreground of TV star-making programs in China, some suggestions are proposed: encourage innovation and avoid homogeneity; strengthen copyright protection for the form of TV programs; improve cultural taste of programs and cultivate high-quality audiences.