Chinese Narrative And National Image Creation In Cannes Film And Television Advertising(2009-2018)

Telling the Chinese story is a cross-cultural,cross-media,cross-historical,cross-national narratology category.Storytelling,listening to stories,spreading stories,and sharing stories are one of the information behaviors of human beings based on social interactions and instinctual needs.The small stories also contain great culture.The stories play a special role in displaying the cultural connotation and spiritual temperament of a country.As one of the three major advertising events in the world,Cannes International Creative Festival is known as the Oscar of the advertising industry.The film and television advertisements are highly story-telling;the spread of Chinese stories through film and television advertisements can close the emotional distance with foreign audiences.Compared with the previous national image promotional films,the advertising stories can "silently" convey Chinese cultural symbols and values,and play an important role in invisibly shaping the national image.This paper takes 53 Chinese film and television advertisements in Cannes International Creative Festival in the period of 2009-2018 as the research object,extracts the cultural symbols and values through text analysis,and uses narratology,semiotics and story marketing theories.This research focuses on answering which cultural symbols are deeply rooted and distinctive in the inheritance of Chinese civilization in the past five thousand years,and which Chinese cultural values have global themes in contemporary China? How to choose good Chinese stories with universality and commonality for dissemination?Through analysis,this study concludes that the most popular Chinese cultural symbols in Cannes film and television advertisements are: traditional festival celebration symbols(Spring Festival,Fu characters,red envelope),traditional Wushu symbols(Bruce Lee,Chinese Wushu),traditional diet symbols(chopsticks),and Chinese character symbols(Chinese characters).And we get three universal values accepted and recognized by the international community: the social and cultural values of “reciprocity and mutual assistance”,the family culture values of “benevolence and harmony” and the ecological and civilized values of “harmony between man and nature”;And put forward three strategies for the use of film and television advertisements to participate in the construction and dissemination of national image: taking China’s core values as the core,rooting in Chinese culture,and achieving the combination of big strategy and small story.