The Author's Representations Of The 1990's Chinese Movie

This essay made a text analysis of the 1990's Chinese movie from the "author theory""s view, with the aim to explore the "author representation" of Chinese contemporary movie directors and their value.The essay consists of six parts: introduction, historical narration, psychological narration, gender narration, identity narration and conclusion, separately they are briefed as follows:The introduction, based on an analysis on the profound relation between "author theory" and British romantic criticism, points out that "author theory" contains aesthetic modernism which is embedded in romantic criticism, and accordingly puts forward a hypothesis that the aesthetic modernism displayed in author's movie and mundane modernism embedded in industrial movie are the main cause of the conflict of these two styles. And this hypothesis becomes the theoretical basis of the essay. In spite of "author theory" as an important cinematic theory, the essay introduces a much common concept "author's representation " instead of "author theory" to give a full analysis to Chinese movie in order to avoid any misunderstandings caused by the western-originated notion "author theory". And "author's representation" is a theory in which the director of a movie tries to discover himself, ensure himself and display himself, bring a special meaning to the world which he wish to show. By this means, the "author" separates himself from various "set rules", and tries to shape a "world view" by his own expression of the outer world simultaneously. The "author representation" in Chinese movie draws a complex picture with the 1990's movies as typical. Therefore, the essay discusses the Chinese movies issued in last decade of last century from the perspective of "author's representation", mainly including the following four parts: "historical narration", "psychological narration", "gender narration", "identity narration".The first chapter, "historical narration", mainly illustrates the author's historical view by describing all types of individuals' stories in certain historical situations, to reprimand the history's bondage and eulogize mankind's vitality. The means of "author's representation" is characteristic of relating individual's fate and historical events to illustrate history, whose emphasis on movies' narration makes the cinematic style turn out to be more realistic than 1980's work. This is greatly due to the use of "human" as the agency instead of any inane and abstract cultural symbols to picture history. The historical narration in 1990's generally falls into three types: the history of imprisoning, the history of shrouding, and the history of bamboozling.Section one analyzes the history of imprisoning, taking TianZhuangzhuang's and ZhangYimou'smovies as example, to show how the movie authors imprison characters into history through violence so that the characters are just like puppets of their fate and finally with a sad ending of death or insanity. Section two turns eyes on the history of shrouding with Zhang Yimou's and HePing's movies as instance, and depicts the submergence of characters into history or local saga. Therefore, an individual's fate became covered by history and characters. Taking TianZhuangzhuang's and FanYuan's work, section three shows the history of bamboozling in which an individual's fate is controlled by history, and indicates the absurdity derived from the heaviness of history and the lightness of an individual.The second chapter, "psychological narration" is to analyze how the movie producer acquires his cognition of human nature by focusing on movie characters' mental activities. This kind of "author's representation" draws a full picture of human nature and psychology that characters have shown in different cinematic space-time. The movie's author separates the characters' mentality from cinematic space-time to give voice to his perception of human nature. Character psychology reveals abundant modalities: infatuation, the desire of revenge, blindness, and prying mania .The picture portrays three sorts of narration, generally including distortion under great pressure, blindness caused by passion, prying led by the desire for love. The above-mentioned three sorts of personality are as follows:Section one is on the distortion under great pressure, taking ChenKaige's and HuangJianzhong's work as example, depicts some profiles of human nature, such as infatuation, dread, acridity and how these characteristics represent in the movies exhaustively. Section two discusses the blindness caused by passion. Take ZhouXiaowen's movie for instance, portrays a peasant woman who has "self-determination consciousness" but no "self-awareness". The movie elaborates the character to show the sightless profile of human nature. Section three analyzes a character in HeJianjun's movie, typical of the personality who became a pryer because of the desire for love, to probe into the living condition of a nobody in a modern big city and then show how the nobody is assembled into the urban machine's function. The movie producer is trying to show how a depressed character breaks through the invisible besiege of modern civilization on his own and the helplessness because of inadequate interpersonal communication in city - the desolate area of modern civilization.The third chapter, "gender narration" is to analyze how the movie producer acquires his cognition of gender by virtue of description of female cinematic images. This kind of "author's representation" displays the cognitive difference of female images between male movie directors and female ones. In other words, the "gender narration" in 1990's is spoken by two kinds of "voice"— female directors and male directors. Although male directors' work is not lack of female images,sometimes their movies are dominated by female images, they are just enjoying the experience of "overlooking" feminine by dint of female images, and actually feminine is still the "overlookee" in man's eyes. Comparatively, female directors' observation on feminine is more approximate to nature, though their feminine sense also develops gradually, from the individual's separation from feminine group to the concentration on the anxiety of modern women's inner heart. The chapter gives analysis to these two "voices" as follows:Section one is to analyze male movie directors' gender narration, with XieFei's and XiaGang's work as example, shows the authors' feminine view is either the overlooking experience of bringing feminine into traditional the "insulted or hurt" or the expatiation of power challenge between the conqueror and the conquered from the point of view of an individual without downright feminine mentality. Section two discusses female movie directors' gender narration, taking LiShaohong's and MaXiaoying's work as example, then figures out the feminine movies of 1990's perform a positive and in-depth research on feminine self-awareness, despite the ebb-tide of feminine composition. Movie authors depict women's positive option on fate by a particular gender thinking way or describe their anxiety by entering their inner-heart world, complete an antagonistic narration against male directors, using women's inward mental complexity and exceedingly affectionate love.The forth chapter, "identity narration" reveals the method of the mutual brink identification between the narrative object and subject identity through cinematic script, specifically, the "new generation "directors' brink culture identification and anxiety under the influence of generation gap. The characteristic of this kind of "author's representation" is that the new generation directors infuse the identity consciousness into the composition initiatively or subliminally. The characteristics of new generation directors' identity narration are introduced in the following three sections in this chapter.Section one narrative object shows the new generation directors' attention to the characters with low social status in cities or towns like thieves, rock-and-rollers, unemployed workers, prostitutes and what not. Take JiaZhangke's movie, it analyzes how these characters submit to the social power and how the author reflects his own situation by cinematic images. Section two narrative content focuses on the growing-up theme in the "new generation" movies, taking JiangWen's and LuXuechang's work as example, the producers, by virtue of reminiscence of growing-up, release their passion of youth and the devastating impulse of youth, which is of great narcissism. Section three narrative methods suggest "new generation" movies are in the vanguard of the cinematic industry, which generally contains two completely different styles, namely realism and formalism. Lou Ye's movie as a typical example shows that formalism is characteristic of irregular graphic composition and counter-conventional fabric and the like. Finally, the essay points out that "new generation" directorsand their movies' characteristics show their taboo against and sensitiveness to "identity", which is just an obstacle to new generation's free expression.The conclusion of the essay is drawn as: Chinese movie in the 1990's contains ample "author's representation". However, this kind of narration vacillates and sways under the influence of different factors, for this reason, Chinese movie directors should reinforce and solidify it and avoid being domesticated by commercial ideology or others to be brown-nose, and the endeavor will make movie a "forceful" and" knowledgeable" art.