(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
It attracts a large number of young and middle-aged scholars who would like to build
success in the academic field to involve in this aspect. All of this, leads to the surging
rise of national research on local films in mainland China.
The Academic Consideration
With remarkable achievements that Chinese films made in the world in two or three
decades, Chinese film research gradually rise up and get great achievements, but
showing some unsatisfactory features. For academic debate, national research at lest
returns two of the unsatisfactory features: Eurocentrism and the Cross-cultural
Analytic Patterns
Eurocentrism
Among western research on Chinese film, western theories has always putting on the
most prominent, the most obvious and the most important position.As professor
Zhang Yingjin has point out, this 'academic eurocentrism' covers up the inability of
western theory on Chinese film texts. (2008, p130)
Western scholars simply regard Chinese films as 'raw material' and make use of
western analytic term to carry out the 'processing.' When they apply it, they do not
consider whether western theories are suitable for Chinese film texts, but picking up
the examples which are in line with western theories to form the conclusions. This
kind of research manner, which applies study objects to meet all theories, in fact is far
from being the analysis on texts of Chinese films; it just reiterates the results which
have been stated by Western theory, and does not touch the concrete items of Chinese
culture. This kind of studies settle for successfully putting a Chinese film into the
Western theoretical paradigm and with no interest in the original intentions of the film
director and the meaning and significance of the film to Chinese audience.
If a slice or chapter of a Chinese film is full of connotation but can not be explained
by "typical types" which are issued by western theories, or it is not the focus of
attention in Western theories, it will be neglected. But some of these neglected items
are maybe the really important ones for Chinese film.
The neglect of Chinese film (or to say 'the selection on Chinese film') covers up the
powerless assumption of western theory on Chinese film text. Such incompetence is
prominently expressed in indifference on Chinese film style as a subtle poetic sense
and also as a representation tool (narrative manner). Western scholars praise that
Chinese films are rich in the form and flavor, but they lack of effective method to
criticize the real value of color, lighting, composition in the shots, camera movement
and empty lens which are deliberately designed in Chinese film. They also fail to
explain the specific meaning because internal logics of this style are oriental ones.
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