Study On The Chinese Saga TV Drama In Modernity

This dissertation takes Chinese Saga TV Drama as its studying object. The Saga TV Drama is a kind of voluminous narrative art in artistic conception during the teleplay production, which takes the big families that have the similar topic characteristics as its aesthetic representing objects, takes the wax and wane of the big families in two or more generations as its narrative skeleton, takes the relationships between the families and family members as its narrative focus, and reflect the essence of Chinese history since the late Qing dynasty on the basis of the merging point of history between family, nation and individual.Why we choose the Saga TV Drama as our studying object? In the contemporary China, teleplay is the most popular way for art consumption and psychological diversion. It's also one of the most important art production activities. Teleplay is far more than the image narrating text. It's something related to the multi-fields in which the society and the viewers interact with each other tightly. The teleplay is an important approach for culture and meaning construction usually by representing the current societal prospect and people's spiritual demand.We can find many dualistic and opposite elements which we usually identify and cognize in the Saga TV Drama: traditional and modern, China and the world, east and west, global and locative, conservative and revolutionary, prospecting and critical and so on. The Saga TV Drama represents not only the pursuit of China's modernity but also the current Chinese prospect. It reflects the historical situation and realistic practice of Chinese society relatively from the aspects of narrative text and societal text. Thus, this dissertation gives a relatively comprehensive research and discussion on the Saga TV Drama in a holistic visual field of modernity.This dissertation study the Saga TV Drama in two contexts. One is the social and historical context which shows the huge development transition since the new phase of China's reform and open to the outside world. As a reality of societal existence, this context will definitely and profoundly influence the art production of Chinese teleplay which includes the Saga TV Drama. It not only provides the precondition to the appearance and prosperity of the Saga TV Drama, but also promotes the ongoing new tendency of the production of the Saga TV Drama. The other is the historical context of production of Chinese teleplay. The Chinese teleplay has formed a unique law of art production over the past 5 decades of development since its birth in 1958. Many habits, experiences and paradigms during the production of Chinese teleplay have regulated the basic visage of the Saga TV Drama's artistic form. Thus, this dissertation regards its studying object as an independently artistic text system, a unique social and cultural phenomenon and also an open social and cultural system.Guided by the culture study and taking the modernity theory as its theoretical principle, this dissertation combines the sociology and aesthetics, macroscopical culture analysis and microcosmic close reading of text , hoping to give a probe into the psychological status of the contemporary China in the current deepening globalization, which was embodied by the production, consumption and accept of the Saga TV Drama. This dissertation also hopes to understand and master the historical connotation, narrative forms, aesthetic features and cultural values of the Saga TV Drama from an artistic and aesthetic angle.The introduction elaborates the meaning and significance of the chosen topic, defines the connotation and denotation of the studying object, and illuminate the main theoretic basis and dissertation frame.The 1st chapter combs the developing history of the Chinese Saga TV Drama, divides the developing phases and generalizes the characteristics of different phases, so as to provide corresponsive historical background for the latter dissertation.The 2nd chapter discusses the aesthetic representing of the Saga TV Drama from the content aspect. This chapter divides the content of the Saga TV Drama into commerce stories, love stories and revolution stories. Each aspect then develops from the macroscopical angle of theoretical elaboration, the microcosmic angle of character illumination and the middle angle of plots analysis. This chapter studies the modernity which was exhibited from the topic and content of the Saga TV Drama mainly from the cultural and societal aspects.The 3rd chapter studies the narrative feature of the Saga TV Drama. Enlightened by the layer-structured narrating thought from the structural narrative theory, this chapter studies the intrinsic logic, narrative characters and their relations, narrative rhetoric and other aspects from the 3 narrating aspects of intrinsic structure, superficial structure and extrinsic structure, so as to comprehensively understand and master the narrating forms of"integration of family and nation"and the modernity which are reflected by the Saga TV Drama.The 4th chapter studies the aesthetic quality of the Saga TV Drama. This chapter elaborated the realistic spirit, tragic style and epic form of the Saga TV Drama. The 5th chapter studies the cultural value of the Saga TV Drama. This chapter focuses on the cultural value of the Saga TV Drama and the cultural value anomie arising from the current Saga TV Drama production. It also surveys the Saga TV Drama critically in a modernity view, so as to promote and benefit the productive practice of the Saga TV Drama. Seeing from the communication system angle, the 6th chapter studies the power which promote the emergence and developing and prosperity of the Saga TV Drama from the relations of text and the society, creator, media and audience.In the end, the epilogue generalizes the whole dissertation in simple words and put forward with an idea that the Saga TV Drama should develop under the direction of cultural consciousness.Generally speaking, this dissertation gives a comprehensive discussion on all kinds of aspects of the Saga TV Drama both in a diachronic and synchronous view. This analysis bases on a modernity theory all along and achieves the logic and theoretic depth of narrating in comparison with the related fields such as literature, movie and so on. In fact, these four aspects are not parallel completely. There are still some very intensive logic relations among them, which conforms to the theoretic thinking direction of"What and how the Saga TV Drama represents, what kind of aesthetic quality it exhibits and what kind of value and problem". This dissertation illuminates the motive power why the Saga TV Drama comes into being in a dynamic and systematic visual field of production and communication, consumption and identification. It also gives a simple generalization to the study of Saga TV Drama from a height of macrocosm view.This dissertation makes a rational analysis on the Chinese Saga TV Drama in a systematic view for the 1st time, trying to discover some characteristics of production and disciplinary tendency of it, which are surveyed in modernity. The dissertation also unveils the significance and values of the Saga TV Drama in the contemporary China's cultural production and social practice, and then displays the intimate interaction between the aesthetics and social culture of the teleplay. The Saga TV Drama here is a dual text which has the characteristics of both artistic text and social text.