A Study of the Significance of Applying Post- colonialism in the Research of Chinese-language Films, with Particular Concerns on Films Adapted from Novels and Their Female Characters

【Abstract】Film study is one of the significant concerns of post-colonialism. In the context of globalization, not only because film, as the product of image technology, is the institutionalized mechanism of “watching”, but also because of its given nature of convenience of dissemination and the wideness of influence. It presents imaginations towards different subjects and objects on different cultural boundaries within the framework of globalization. Films often typically present Saids theory of “the geography imagination and expression”, especially the “otherness” image of the East in the eyes of the West. While in the self-expression of Oriental films, there is inevitable adaptive modification to Western ideology, which, is a “hybridity” situation from a post-colonial perspective.

【Key words】post-colonialism; hybridity; third space

【作者簡介】趙華(1987.09.19-)，女，漢族，河北保定人，碩士，研究方向：英語語言文學。

1. Flourish of Chinese-Language Films

Since the end of the 1980s, Chinese film meets its exploration of films with the success of “Red Sorghum”, which opened the way of Chinese film to the world, followed by a large number of similar films, such as “Farewell to the Concubine”, “Raise the Red Lantern” etc. These films combine literary elements with movie expressions and begin to appear one after another in front of the world audience.

Relying on Chinas broad and profound cultural tradition, Chinese films have their strong non-replicable oriental charm. Many films are derived directly from Chinese literary masterpieces and novels, which endows Chinese films with strong heterogeneity compared with mainstream Western films, leaving Chinese films obvious edge advantage to receive a quick success. However, Chinese films often mystify its culture elements as a subsidiary to the Western Hollywood film cultural center, thus meeting the needs of Western audiences to seek curiosity and peep into privacy. In order to gain the acceptance of Western mainstream culture, they tend to make compromise and flattery to western culture, making it impossible for them to obtain a true international identity and the fairness of international exchanges. The values of Hollywood films cannot replace our concern for local reality and culture. We must find an effective core value to guide the development of our film industry so that it can truly acquire its international identification and become one of the world multicultural cultures with an independent gesture.

2. The Development and Main Theory of Post-colonialism

The exploration of post-colonialism gave rise to a large number of outstanding theorist.

Edward Said, the author of the famous Orientalism and Culture and imperialism, came up with the concept of “Orientalism”, which had a deep insight into the dualism between the East and West. He believes that the West thinks the East as the existence of the “object”, as in the book of Orientalism he mentioned: “the Orient and Orientals [are considered by orientalism] as an “object” of study, stamped with an otherness” (Said, 2003:p97). His thoughts involve “de-centralization” and “deconstruction,” .

Homi K. Bhabha, with his masterpiece Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture, contributes the idea of “hybridity” and “Third Space”. In the post-colonial study, Bhabha believes that the colonial domination and oppression of the colonized people is not only a one-way operation of power, in fact, the relationship between them is intertwined and difficult to be strictly delimited and distinguished. Bhabha also stressed the colonized ones identification as “agency”, which can only be realized in “hybridity” states, just like Homi K. Bhabha ever said, The display of hybridity -its peculiar “replication”-terrorizes authority with the ruse of recognition, its mimicry, its mockery. (Homi K. Bhabha, 1994, p165).

In addition to Bhabha, Bill Ashcrofts explanation of “hybridity” is more specific. He believes that hybridity is “the cross-cultural form of the two cultural contact zones brought about by colonial behavior.” In post-colonial discourse, “hybridity” does not belong entirely to the colonizer, but it should be noted that it does not belong entirely to the colonized side either. On the one hand, it repeats the origin of the existing culture. On the other hand, under colonial oppression, new cultural forms and cultural practices are constantly created, and new cultures are used to resist the old ones.

3. Significance of Apply Post-colonialism into Chinese Films that Adapted from Novels

In China, When we talk about post-colonialism in the Chinese context, it is often misinterpreted as a kind of cultural conservatism. There are many reasons for such misreading, for example, there is a more or less nationalist tendency in the post-colonial criticism in China for a long time, which inevitably leads to a radical view of criticism. This is the injury of cultural conservatism and orientalism to the universality of art.

The study of discourse films has been in full swing, especially after the rise of comparative literature. People are more and more inclined to adopt post-colonialism to analyze Chinese-language movies. Research on this field need to take a large number of film facts as example, in which particular attention should be paid to movies adapted from Chinese traditional novels, and especially to the female images in the works, to explore their tampering with traditional culture, and the deviation from the original ideology, which is guided by western values and flatters the mainstream culture of the West. At the same time, it is also a “hybridity” to mainstream Western culture, it is both deconstruction and reconstruction of the Western Film aesthetics. We should explore both the significance and drawbacks of this cultural adaptability, and also, through close reading of Chinese literature, find out the essential core of Chinese culture, and bring them to the discussion of films handling techniques, to explore how to both retain their traditional cultural core of the national film and be accepted by the world.

References：

[1]Homu K. Bhabha. The Location of Culture[M]. London and New York: Routledge,1994.

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[3]Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism[M]. New York: Alfred A. Knorf, Inc.,1993.

[4]Said, Edward W. Orientalism[M]. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 2003.

[5]Northrop Frye ed., Selected Poetry and Prose of Blake[J]. New York: Random House,1953.