Comparative Study On Chinese And American Female Films

In 1895,the French Lumiere brothers created "kinetograph".Therefore,film was born in human life.As a kind of audio-visual combination of artistic expression,the film is not only a kind of communication medium,but also a kind of thinking carrier,expressing the culture of a nation and values of the times.The construction of female consciousness and images leads to various interpretations on women and gender issues.This paper takes the female films within top 25 of 2013-2015 film box office in China and the United States as the research object.From the aspects of Production(Communicator)-Content(Content)-Receiving(Audience),using content analysis method in communication studies,this paper combines the theories of cultural studies,semiotics,and narratology,to explore the potential influence of culture on those films.This study has found that,on the production side,as an institutionalized system of power,the film industry needs the participation of female producers and performers,which provides more possibilities to guarantee the freedom of expression;on the content side,influenced by their respective historical culture,the Chinese and American female films have showed differences over the narrative time and space,femininity and subjective cognition,namely Chinese films are more adept at using empty lens and repeated lens,to emphasize artistic conception.Meanwhile,home,office,school and other general scenes appear more often,describing the feeling of women through love experiences;however,American female films value more about the function of vocal language in fulfilling the narrative time,while as for the narrative space,they break the conventional sense of female places and the images of women are diverse and more independent;as to the interpretation of viewers,in Chinese reviews(Douban Movie),star worship and "tech-geek" lead to the neglect-ion of female consciousness shown in the films and the viewers are not quite adapt to the reduction of male elements in female films.In comparison,the American critics(IMDb)reveal more sensitive female consciousness,along with some conflicting interpretation from different gender position.