| Taking the American movie site IMDb as the research object, this paper analyzes the history of IMDb and the statistics of the top rated movies listed on IMDb over the years, in order to show the characteristics of the movie list culture of IMDb, the user’s aesthetic taste for film and the main factors affecting the list. Then eventually this paper leads to the innovation and influence of film study and notion reforms on film history, theory and criticism.In the introduction, this paper takes IMDb as the resource, analyzes the(potential)changes in film history compilation and studies brought about by new media/the Internet,discusses the possibility of movie website being the object of film history study and tries to identify the reasons why movie site literature is on the lowest level of all forms of literature.This paper makes an effort to provide some feasible methods for theoretical construction of film history and historiography. Through analyzing existing research on IMDb in both English and Chinese, it is shown that the research only takes IMDb as a resource instead of an object of research. Therefore this paper adopts a research method which analyzes the history and the movie list culture of IMDb from the perspective of cultural power and media power.In the first chapter, this paper describes IMDb’s four paths of development through analyzing its history, and records the development of IMDb with the historiography method of “events”. The paper then concludes that movie databases represented by IMDb are not the product of new media or the Internet. From the perspective of the history of movie information organizing and proliferation, movie databases have gone through the periods of Video Home System(VHS), Personal Computer(PC), the Internet and Mobile Internet.Movie databases are the history of movie proliferation technology and the history of movie website culture.In the second chapter, the discussion is based on the phenomenon of movie lists resulted from the “implosion” of movie information against the background of new media. On the one hand, with the research method of geopolitics, this chapter analyzes the regional characteristics of website movie lists in culture transmission. On the other hand, from the perspective of media power and cultural power, this chapter suggests the nature of movie lists is “movie ranking list”. Then the chapter concludes the movie lists’ innovation and reconstruction effects on film history compilation and movie review system. This chapter also analyzes the rating system and personnel structure of IMDb and its top rated movie lists and reveals the changes of movie review methods and reviewers’ community in the newmedia/Internet era.The third chapter reveals the influencing factors of IMDb’s top rated movie lists by analyzing the battle for the first place in IMDb Top 250 among Batman: The Dark Knight(2008), The Godfather(1972) and The Shawshank Redemption(1994). Taking the score cheating event of Batman: The Dark Knight as an example, this chapter also analyzes the equity, order and pattern of movie lists, describes the “antidemocratic” and “open prison”nature of movie lists, as well as its discourse domain of “eliminating differences”. This paper then turns to the innovation of the study of stars and fans culture in the Internet era.In the forth chapter, the first section analyzes the statistics of IMDb’s movie lists over the years, including movies on the lists, users’ votes(showing the level of attention a movie draws) and users’ rating(showing the level of popularity a movie has), in order to show the general trend of IMDb users’ aesthetic taste for movies and filmology awareness. Then the paper concludes that the movie lists of such websites as IMDbs can be seen as the history of audiences’ aesthetic taste for movies as well as a new film history written by audiences.The second section of the forth chapter takes Chinese movie Yip Man(2008) as an example, and analyzes IMDb users’ preference of aesthetic taste for Chinese movies based on the nationality of movies on top rated movie lists. This section discusses the differences between the western audiences(represented by IMDb users) and Chinese audiences(represented by Douban Movie and Mtime users) in terms of aesthetic taste for movies. This is done by analyzing the following perspectives: the shown and “hidden” Kung Fu,“professional” Kung Fu stars, and males as objects being seen\stared. The paper suggests that western audiences do not normally care about Kung Fu movies on the level of aesthetic innovation; they put more attention on the visual spectacles of the action. Through analyzing the male stature, violence and politics in Kung Fu movies, this paper points out the effects that the new media have had on the construction of “national image” and movie proliferation.In the third section of the forth chapter, the discussion turns to the types of movies on the movie lists. This section takes the mystery movies/thrillers directed by Hitchcock as examples,and analyzes IMDb users’ ratings and comments on these movies. It then analyzes the“Hitchcock battle” in the new media era through a few categories: the battle of “ontology of film art” among film critics, the battle of “hierarchy of movie genre” in the Oscars and the battle of “aesthetic taste for movies” among audiences. Based on the analysis, this paper states that audiences’ aesthetic taste for movies/new media film review and critics/traditional film review, and the Oscars/movie festivals all contribute to movie criticism in the Internet era.This section also analyzes IMDb users’ comments on the review history of Hitchcock’s movies, in order to show the “shadow” of traditional reviews on website reviews, the trend of analyzing movies in detail, film theory and philosophy. The section eventually concludes the reviewers’ community and movie websites’ function as a “supernumerary school” in the newmedia/the Internet era.Through the collection of the materials and statistics, as well as the analysis of movie reviews and the writing of this paper, the author believes that movie websites and the top rated movie lists can be seen as the film history written by audiences in the new media era.The users’ ratings and comments have changed the discourse domain of movie reviews, the manner of discourse and the constitution of critics. The phenomenon of fans’ score cheating on movie sites changed the structure and order of movie lists and started the battle of movies in the Internet era. At the same time, the phenomenon also facilitates a fresh perspective of the study of the stars and fans culture in the new media era, and its effect on the construction of movie review system. |
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