Teen movies, as a sub type of movies, developed very prosperously, including teen films which was popular in Hollywood in the 1960s, Japanese and Korean youth films which occupied the Asian market in the 1990s and even Taiwan youth movies in the new century. However, looking through Chinese movie history, the personal memory of youth which should have been on the stage of films earlier, has been stranded as Empty Signifier due to the needs of political ideology.Since the new age of China, with the change of social system and the rapid process of modernization quickened by the reform and opening-up, the youth years which bore the collective memory had gradually disappeared and the idea innovation focused on humanism took its place. Young people and the whole society gradually got rid of the original dependence of the earth, villages, mountains and rivers and devoted themselves to the market economy of urbanization which developed swiftly.The youth form at the beginning of Reform and Opening-up was. on one hand, filled with sadness of the lost youth; on the other hand, filled with love and praise of modernization and the motherland. The falling apart of past collective space brought death and birth. Youth movies in the 1990s, however, totally dispensed the collective memory of the turbulent times. Instead of persisting in traditional culture, villages and fables like their predecessors, they used more edged themes and narrative modes to express personal emotions and were loyal to a new and true image. They focused on the uncertainty of city daily life and city became the soil of movies. At the same time, they were quietly followed on the screen. In the early 21th century, Chinese society took off in economy and became globally open. The narration of youth became more abundant and preferred the unique and personalization of self memory in private space.This article starts from the budding period of youth movie in China mainland-late 70s and early 80s, cards different expressions of youth movies in different periods and gives full definitions to this type of movies. What’s more, the article outlines their unique developing form, thus sorts out the changing narrative space and paints the change of youth memory from collective public space to personal growth space, trying to show the changes of tension of teenagers’ self identity to cognitive society from the common and changes of narrative space. |