Comparative Study Of Visual Spectacle In Historical Documentary, China And America

Western society has entered the era of consumption nowadays. China alsobecomes a prosperous and powerful country and moving into the stage. The maincommon characteristics of all arts in the luxury consumption time are entertainment.In the background of the “entertainment”, the traditional documentary based onBarzun‘s image ontology--“the camera never lies”. Now with the science andtechnology development and the rise of people’s desire, the traditional documentaryhas been broken and subversion–the omnipresent special effects and exquisiteperformance is everywhere to show off the invisible history and shock people withvisual senses. The desire of visual spectacle is rising. Science and technology anddesire has got twisted, just like DNA helical chain, created the miracles of this world,also made “image” into the “lie”.The documentary is the most authentic and objective image in the art field, andalso the last stand. But when entertainment is effortlessly erasing the real andimaginary boundaries, the final position has been fallen.The last century since eighty or ninety time, from the West to China, theentertainment function of the documentary began to rise. Through drawing lessonsfrom all the skills of drama, the “spectacle” has been introduced into a real palace.This article attempts to descript and sort out the entertainment and spectaclephenomenon for the Western Cultural History Documentary. Based on “the theory ofspectacle”, it discusses the case study for specific documentary and find out thecreative difference between Chinese and Western in “spectacle elements”. Alsoaccording to the data of audience rating to judge what the broadcasting effect will beinduced by these differences, and then provide the advice for acquire better audiencerating on China historical documentary in future.Based on the two classical humanities and historical documentaries incontemporary society, this article mainly focuses on the spectacle elements within-depth studies. They are:《Dun Huang》, produced by Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio in2005;《The Lost Pyramid》, produced by The UnitedStates of America History Channel in2008. The article has statistics, analysis andcomparison according to the four elements of “3D animation”,“2D figure”,“Situationreappearance” and “literature spectacle”Through the above research, it detected the difference in spectacle elementsbetween Chinese and Western. After analyzed the data of audience rating (per minute)from Shanghai SMG Arts Channel, it also showed the difference in the effect ofbroadcast. Thus, this article proposed a new production mode of spectacle elementson humanities and historical documentary based on the objectives from local audiencein Shanghai.