The Study On Cultural Misreading Of American Movies From An Intercultural Perspective

Along with that American movies are getting more and more popular, the youngpeople in China, taking the college students as the pioneer, become more and more obsessedwith the foreign culture. Having stepped in a high technology age, the American culture hasinvaded in other countries by new ways, among which Hollywood movie is really foremost.Hollywood movies carry the American ideology has invaded the young group. As theHollywood movies penetrate so deep and college students has increased the level of movieappreciation, the movie viewers in China do not only watch movie for fun, but interpret themin the process of watching, and the movie impact them very much. When they interpret, themisreading is inevitable, and the misreading will contribute to their shaping of ideology whichhas a very large influence on their growing and the forthcoming intercultural communication.Therefore, the paper is to study the culture misreading of American movies.Movies, an art to express the ideas, concepts, and views about various sophisticatedor superficial subjects, are depicting things in different angels. Facing the American movie,different nations has different misreading. Chinese viewers’ cultural misreading of Americanmovies have deep reasons which account for the difference between China and America, thenative culture in China, and the depiction that American movies prefer intentionally. The datacollected from the questionnaire and the more profound talk have been adopted in theinterviews, which focus on research questions, what the specific phenomena of culturalmisreading of American movies among viewers are, and how the misreading affect people.According to analyze the data and interview content, three hypotheses are assumed,(a) The Cultural misreading of Hollywood movies contribute to the unconsciouscultural assimilation of college students;(b) Cultural misreading of Hollywood movies leadsthe college students to doubt their native culture;(c) Cultural misreading of Hollywoodmovies can improve college students’ cultural creation.Based on the Hofstede’s cultural theories, values are the essence of one culture,so the paper concentrates on the cultural misreading on values. It turns out that collegestudents mainly misread the individualism, heroism, and love view. According to analyze thecultural misreading on these three points, the former three hypotheses are verified. Afterwards,the paper discusses the cause, effects, and strategies to cultural misreading, expecting to makeconstructive suggestions for ESL.