The Research Of Narrative Ethics In Jia Zhang Ke’s Film

Jia Zhangke is the leading figure among the sixth generation directors in China. With distinct themes,unique viewpoints and creative composing process, Jia’s movies have drawn the attention of the filmdomboth at home and abroad since his first work came on screen. As a up-rising star of the filmdom in the1990s, Jia records a changing China in his movies and has occupied an important position in the global filmmarket by forming a kingdom filled with little persons’ stories that totally different from the traditionalgrand narratives with his special composing style and reflecting the true living conditions of the peoplefrom lower class during China’s modernization with unique perspectives. Jia’s movies are considered to"convey the most real life experience and pay close attention calmly and objectively to the livingconditions of the lowest class through performing the strong conflicts between the individual and theenvironmental in the new era." This thesis mainly analyses Jia’s films from the narrative ethics perspective,which means to give an analysis on how his films convey moral sentiment and moral compassion by theway of researching the narrative space, perspectives and techniques used in his movies.This thesis principally consists of six parts. The first part is the introduction which aims to discuss Jia’sfilms, the awards he has won both at home and abroad and the source of the concepts of the narrative andnarrative ethics in his movies. The second part comes to the films’ narrative space and narrative ethics.While a film is a visual art in which the space rendering is an indispensable component, this chapter aims toclassify the narrative spaces presented in Jia’s movies and in turn analyze the narrative ethics emerged fromthe spaces. The third part is about the pop music and the narrative irony. Popular songs appear frequently inJia Zhangke’s film and carry kinds of functions. In addition to promoting the development of plots andexpressing the protagonist’s psychological and emotions, the songs can also imply a sense of narrative irony.The fourth part describes the characters’ destinies and the moral compassion. This chapter analyzes avariety of characters in the Jia’s films, such as the marginal people in his hometown, wanderers and laid-offworkers in cities, female images and so on, and then analyzes the moral compassion expressed in the filmsby positioning characters in different moral context and in this way making them face to ethical choices andvalue judgments. The fifth part concerns on the ethics of bottom-class narration and individual freedom narration. This chapter, from the narrative perspectives of Jia’s movies, analyze the reasons he choicesbottom narration and the ethic pursuit of love and the humanistic care for bottom figures conveyed in hismovies. The last part comes to the epilogue, that is, the Dual Rejection and the crisis of film narrativeethics. Through the analysis of Bourdieu’s field theory, this chapter expounds the crisis film narrative ethicsfacing with.