A Research On Narrative Comparison Between Chinese And American Crime-and-Gangster Movie

The "Poietike Techne" wrote by Aristotle pointed out that a completecircumstances was the most important part of narration. After that, the study related tonarratology went through two thousand years of inheritance and development. Thefilm as independent narrative function of the media appeared nearly200years, duringthis time, in the narrative form of film and television perfected on gradually, whichincluded a complete story, reasonable narrative logic and plump figure, and the threeinteractive formed a well-knit structure system. Film and TV as a visualization systemof signs, it is often in a different form, but it has and public life, it present andreflected the "story" of all the public not to open the material life and spirit pursuit.Berg’s think for traditional TV decoding still put us in a "narrative plot age".Along with the promotion of research for film and TV in narration, theory researchhad been quite substantial. Scholars began to research narrative and inner relationshipbetween film and television, the related theory including communication, psychology,sociology and law had gradually entered the film narrative research field. Narrativeresearch is no longer simple structure and deconstruction text, it closely linked withspread rule, social psychology, popular culture.In recent year, crime-and-gangster film was a kind of burgeoning genre film fromthe inchoate western film, which became the favor of the director and audience, evenin scholar’s research object. Since “Prison Break” became popular, Americanexported more than300,000hours U.S. TV dramas to the overseas.Crime-and-gangster films gradually became a important carrier of Americaneconomic, culture and ideology. China also had many famous crime-and-gangsterfilms and TV dramas such as “Case of Six Groups”,“The Truth Will Out” and“Infernal Affairs” etc. Although these films and TV dramas were very excellent, therewas huge deficiency in communication range and effect when compared with U.S.films and TV dramas.In the early20th century, The concept “function”of anthropology was brought in narratology research by Propp, the Narrative theory master of Russia. From thenon, the pedigree, using “function” to dispel narrate, laid the foundation for laterstructure socialist film.As a film genre, just as other genre, crime-and-gangster filmalso contained a kind of narrative logic that surpassed its own form, and owned itsinternal and external form characteristics as well as functional characteristics. Thisarticle took crime-and-gangster films of China and United states as text and usednarrative type, narrative text as well as narrative ethics to built up the central contentof this article. The linked relationship during narrative type, narrative text andnarrative ethic, just like skeleton structure, flesh and blood, personalized spirit wouldbe a interdependent whole, they lived together and wouldn’t die alone.This article discussed crime-and-gangster films in both China and United Statesby applying comparative analytic approach as follows.Firstly the author destructednarrative styles based on the theory of structuralism which considered structuredecided function and organizational structure of a film determined expression of itsembodied meaning.The presentations of individualistic heroism and collectivism,technical reappearance and restoration of reality were all based on the constructivestyle of a crime-and-gangster films, even though in different forms. Secondly thisarticle applied post-modernism label and the audient principle on the analysis of thedifference in narrative text. Post-modernism emphasized resolution and subversion.Crime-and-gangster films had characteristic hybridity and fuzzification in plot,characters and the styles of sounds and pictures in the post-modernism’s perspective.Lastly, the writer quoted the definition of narrative ethic by Professor Xiaofeng Liuand analysed the difference between Chinese and American crime-and-gangster filmsin the visual angle which the people ethic and the freedom ethic were opposite.Modern crime-and-gangster films in both China and United States had evolved fromsole opposition of the people ethic and the freedom ethic to the “intersecting type”.And the people ethic and the freedom ethic in crime-and-gangster films transformedcontinuously between polices and bandits.