From Mechanical Duplication To IMAX3D

Based on the theory of Benjamin’s aesthetics of cinematography this thesis analyzes the direction of modern culture targeting on movies, a main carrier of mass culture. By reviewing the influence of the changes of culture carriers on the content of culture, the changes of people’s aesthetic experience through different culture carriers have been analyzed. During the cultural period when culture is passed on by word of mouth or by prints, people’s aesthetic experience cannot be apart from language, while during the period when electronic media has become a new culture carrier, traditional aesthetic experience meet great challenge, which should be treated objectively. Therefore, the old aesthetic theories based on traditional culture need to be adjusted.It should be noticed that a new culture mode, mass culture, has emerged based mainly on movies, a culture carrier originating from new technologies. Mass culture is commercial, entertaining, and relies on mass media. It not only provides the public with art products but bring its unique aesthetic method to them as well, which threats traditional cultural aesthetic method. Movies are the most influential instrument. Based on the comparison among different aesthetic experience generated from oral transmission culture, printing culture and electronic media culture, this thesis puts emphasis on the great changes of people’s aesthetic mode from written language to images:the halo of art has been abolished by numerous duplicates created by mechanical duplication technology; the industrialized production of culture impose the culture to cater to the aesthetic taste of the public, which leads movies to create successive visual spectacles in order to accomplish the commercial end to attract the audience. Consequently, movies ceaselessly improve their own technology driven by commercial interests to retain the audience’s surprised feelings, which promotes the creation of three-dimensional movies in contrast to traditional two-dimensional movies. Because of the limitation on its own technology, three-dimensional movie once sank into stagnations during its development. It developed rapidly after the combination with IMAX. Its visual effect can create verisimilar real circumstances and realize the aesthetic empathy effect and arouse the audience’s sense of participation by technology. As a burgeoning culture, mass culture has become the leading culture in very short time utilizing movies, televisions and other media carriers. The same is as in China, whose culture includes traditional culture, official culture and elite culture. The burgeoning mass culture dispels the aesthetic core of traditional culture—“images”, making aesthetic more visualized, which lowers the threshold of cultural participation as well as restricts the imagination of the public. Under the impact of the policy of reforming and opening up, mass culture landed in China and quickly became popular, which means the art mode of“high standard, general subject and including everything” cannot meet the needs of the public. Under the new situation, official culture has changed its attitude towards mass culture. It even tends to combine with mass culture, which is especially embodied in its combination with movies. The development of mass culture, however, has its own problems, that is, its overdependence on technology in firm and lack of culture in content. The movie called Life of Pi provides new thought for the development of mass culture. It is decorated by technology and employed humanity discussion as its content, creating visual spectacles and invoking the discussion of the hidden meaning behind the images.It can be concluded from the above analysis that we should attach enough importance to the new changes. Mass culture and other cultures repel each other as well as absorbed nutrition from each other. During this process, it is an indisputable fact that traditional culture, official culture and elite culture is marginalized gradually. But we should not be too pessimistic for the development of technology cannot be stopped and the changes of culture also exist objectively. What we should pay attention to is how combine culture more efficiently with the real needs of the public under the new situation to embody the humanistic care of the culture. As for new technology, we should neither fear it too much nor depend on it too much. Only the reasonable use of the new art instrument can reinvigorate culture.