Imagined Frontier,Ethnic Identification And Cultural Construction In Yunnan’s Minority Films

Among all types of films in post-1949China, films about minority groups aredistinct. On the one hand, these films take minority groups of China as subjects andcontribute to the visual representations in new China; on the other hand, they rebuildthe cultural imagination about frontier minorities and join in the process ofconstructing the political and cultural community of China. And among them, filmsabout Yunnan’s minority groups are extraordinary and play an important role. Thisdissertation looks at fiction films produced in mainland China from1949to2010,with minority groups of Yunnan as the major or secondary subjects. Drawing insightsfrom film studies, aesthetics, sociology, cultural anthropology and masscommunication, this workcombines textual research, comparative analysis, andhistorical theories with fieldwork investigation to reach the goal. Based upon a reviewof the historical development of Yunnan’s minority films, and setting three mainthemes, namely imagined frontier, ethnic identification and cultural construction, thisdissertation attempts to1) analyze the different narrative and aesthetic styles ofYunnan’s minority films during different periods;2) understand the impact of politicalpolicy on minority films production across time and the political disputes behind thevaried cultural spaces;3) examine the role of Yunnan’s minority films in constructingthe image of ethnic community;4) find out the relationship between minority filmsand the imagination about frontier minority groups;5) disclose the cultural essenceand intrinsic meanings of minority films about Yunnan.The dissertation is composed of the following parts:Introduction starts with the origin and value of this research, introduces the keyconcepts, and sets the scope, contents, framework and methodology of thisdissertation.Chapter1traces the history of Yunnan’s minority filmsin four historical periods:"the seventeen years"(1949-1966),"the new era"(1978-1989);"the1990s"(1990-2001),"the new century"(2002-2012). This chapter focuses on examining how the film styles had been shaped by different social, political, cultural and economiccontexts.Drawing upon the point that "ethnicity is imagined community" by BenedictAnderson, Chapter2discusses about the "imagined frontier" in Yunnan’s minorityfilms from the imaginations about "the exotic,""the customs" and "the other." Andwith the aid of spatial culture theories, this chapter argues that the imagination aboutYunnan is intrinsically the production of spatial meanings out of the interplay betweenutopia in imagination and that in reality.Chapter3looks at the ethnic identification and cultural construction in Yunnan’sminority films from the angle of cultural studies. It argues that films reflect the impactof "political culture,""central culture" and "globalization" on ethnic identificationand cultural construction, and also disclose the dynamic transformation of ethnicidentity from the implicit to the explicit.Chapter4borrows methods from film narratives to examine the culturalmetaphor embedded in Yunnan’s minority films. It analyzes the metaphorical role andmeanings of visual narratives about Yunnan in reconstructing ethnic identification andnational identification from the aspects of "disease metaphor" and "gender metaphor."The author concludes that Yunnan’s minority films contribute greatly to thedevelopment of film culture in China, and also contribute to the ethnic culturalconstruction of China’s multiple as well as unified nationalities. The author points out,however, that the strict sense of Yunnan’s minority films—namely produced byminority groups themselves, displaying the realities of minority groups’ lives, andwith the minority groups as the cultural subjects—haven’t yet really arrived, and stillawait great effort.