The Cultural Memory Study On Chinese Spring Festival Documentary

Mr.Fei Xiaotong(1948)proposes that "Culture is a common social experience maintained by symbolic system and individual memory".The traditional festivals of human society have been passed down from generation to generation,forming an organic part of human cultural pedigree and gradually condensing into the cultural memory of a nation.Since the 21 st century,documentaries themed on Chinese Spring Festival have participated in constructing mass cultural memory of Spring Festival on a large scale.Therefore,the study of cultural memory of Spring Festival documentaries has theoretical and practical significance.As far as the study perspectives of Spring Festival documentaries as concerned,folklore perspective and social memory perspective pay less attention to the power mechanism behind Spring Festival documentaries.Although researches from social memory important perspectives focus on how power in social structure affects the process of memory,they do not pay much attention to the study of symbols and meaning system in the process of power operation,which makes social memory more appear as an official memory controlled by political power.Although researches from folklore perspective attaches great importance to the symbols and meaning system of traditional festivals,it pays little attention to the operation mechanism of power.While,according to the opinion of Jan Assman,cultural memory relying on "institutionalized symbols and meanings" has close relationship with power such as political power,market power and technique power,it essentially has relationship with culutre power.Therefore,this thesis try to explores the relationship between cultural memory,media and power by digging into the empirical material of Spring Festival documentaries.Specifically,the following research questions are concerned: How does the power construct the cultural memory of Spring Festival through the media of documentary? What kind of power operation mechanism is reflected by the producer relation in the production process of Cultural memory of Spring Festival documentary? What kind of power operation mechanism is reflected in the image symbol and meaning system that the cultural memory of Spring Festival documentary relies on?In view of these research problems,this thesis chooses the theoretical perspective of critical communication.Since the cultural memory is constructed by a specific media(documentary),the power mechanism behind the media is the focus of this thesis.In order to establish the relationship between cultural memory,media and power,this thesis tries to find theoretical resources that power can shape cultural memory through media from the perspective of critical communication theory.Critical communication theories bring together many disciplines’ resources to analyze the cultural production of modern media,which constitutes a kind of theory connection not only relating to the macro social political and economic structure ’s construct on media commodities and culture,but also relating to the influence of medium content producers on the specific production of media commodities and culture,and at the same time giving consideration to the micro analysis of media text content.This thesis is using the multi-level view of critical communication to explore the critical analysis,not only examining macro political and economic historic changes behind the process of documentary changes,but also investigating to the documentary pro-ducer power of Spring Festival culture memory,also inspecting Spring Festival documentary text content.In order to carry out a critical discourse analysis on the power mechanism behind the cultural memory of Chinese Spring Festival documentaries,this thesis adopts a qualitative research method to study specific typical cases selected from numerous Chinese Spring Festival documentaries.On macro level,this thesis try to analyze the social history structural background by connecting the society’s structural transformation,the structural change of Spring Festival cultural memory structure,and the revolution of documentary industry,as to interprete that the Spring Festival cultural memory itself is deeply under the influence of politics,economy and culture.The research finds that the cultural memory of Spring Festival documentaries has got rid of the shackles of "revolutionary memory" in politics and started to re-find the traditional cultural concepts and with the marketization and industrialization development of documentaries,the cultural memory of Spring Festival has entered the mode of "mass cultural memory" dominated by political ideology.On the medium level,this thesis mainly explores "Who is Producing Cultural Memories of the Spring Festival? ".This problem is related to the power of the entity of cultural memory.This research identifies the political memory entity of "visible hand",the market memory entity of "invisible hand" and the technique entity of non-humans,in order to explain how political power,capital power,audience power and technique power,as the production force of cultural memory of the Spring Festival,together shape the cultural memory of the Spring Festival.On the micro level,this thesis try to analyze the symbolic system of the Spring Festival documentary content.Because cultural memory depends on specific symbolic systems being activated and reshaped,in order to answer the question "how does political and capital power affect cultural memory through the manipulation of "symbol systems",this thesis introduces Peirce’s triadic pattern of symbolic activity to construct it’s won triadic pattern of cultural memory symbolic activity to explain how does the power manipulate culture memory image and interpretation by "center" or "edge" measure of symbol system,and the "reinterpretation" of the symbols in Spring Festival documentaries.Cultural memory also relies on a specific memory frame to stabilize and gain meaning,which is prominently reflected in the narrative mode of Spring Festival documentaries.Therefore,at the micro level,this thesis tries to establish a relationship between political power,capital power,technique and the cultural memory frame of Spring Festival documentary based on the analysis of narrative mode of documentary content.The research finds that the narrative mode of "isomorphism of home and country" and "experiential dialogue" dominated by political power,and the "consumption narrative" dominated by capital power,increasingly indicating the combination trend of "grand narrative" and "micro narrative" in the short Spring Festival documentary short videos of individual citizens.Their "micro narration" provides a solid consensus foundation for "grand narration" while the "grand narration" can be incorporated into a higher level of Spring Festival cultural memory when constructing nation-state identity in which the cultural memory of Spring Festival from different regions can be exchanged and dialogued;the cultural memory of Spring Festival in different social structures of can be "seen" each other.The cultural memory of Chinese Spring Festival documentaries is presenting a picture of dialogue,integration and pluralism.