Internal culture clashes drive powerful dramas

• Source: Global Times
• [21:31 December 28 2009]
• Comments

Editor’s Note:
China’s film industry, like everything else in the nation, is booming, and TV series are starting to move away from cheap entertainment into serious state-of-the-nation drama. In a hectic year for China and the world, how did Chinese cultural products reflect on issues from the global financial crisis to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC? What adjustments does the Chinese cultural industry need to make for 2o1o? Global Times (GT) reporter Wu Mian interviewed Zhang Yiwu (Zhang), professor and deputy director of Cultural Resources Research Center of Peking University, on Chinese culture in 2009.

Zhang Yiwu

We tend to present our most essential and profound culture to others, such as Confucius and Lao Tzu, while neglecting the fact that few people worldwide read, for instance, the German philosophers Kant and Hegel.-Zhang Yiwu 

GT: 2009 was a productive year for Chinese film and television . Which films and television shows do you think are most representative? 

Zhang: Undercover (Qianfu) and Dwelling Narrowness (Woju) are impressive to me. Undercover deals with many aspects of society, showing people's firm ideals while talking about how to achieve success in life and at work.

This discussion of ideals has very practical significance and includes a fine description of details in life and at work. Yu Zecheng, the protagonist, is a good example. Due to his ideals, he is firm and uncompromising and finally succeeds.

Dwelling Narrowness is also a representative work.

There are both good and bad comments on it. I think it reflects reality and shows the difficult life of ordinary people, especially college graduates.

On the other hand, it has also revealed the changes in people's mentality as China's national conditions are changing.

Driven by the new idea of constructing a powerful country within a century, Chinese people are more concerned about their spiritual feelings and their pursuit of happiness.

Although Dwelling Narrowness includes secular elements, such as high housing prices, corrupt officials and so on, more importantly, it stresses that the definition of well-being for individu-als is set much higher than before.

In the past, the definition of happiness was having enough food and warm clothing, and having a job and a place to live.

But now young people want to achieve the same living conditions as the middle classes in Europe and the US.

Some Chinese people have the ability to pursue high-level living conditions, but it is impractical for all college graduates to take this pursuit as their aim. Thus a new gap in living standards, different from the past pursuit of food and clothing, is created.

Some people think that Dwelling Narrowness reflects unsolved old social problems.

However, the emergence of this new gap is exactly because the old problems have been solved and the new gap has raised new problems in society.

Dwelling Narrowness doesn't reflect that people have trouble surviving, but the gap between the Chinese middle class' expectations of living standards and the reality that those expectations cannot be met.

Those now engaged in the mass media are mostly young people. They may not think that such expectations are higher, but compared with those of 20 years ago, they are much higher.

Compared with TV serials, films are more international. This year's The Founding of a Republic (Jianguo daye) is a masterpiece, which has confirmed that the Chinese mainland has undoubtedly become the center of Chinese-language films.

In content, it confirms the legitimacy of the People's Republic of China, which is built on the basis of 60 years of national development. Thanks to China's increased national strength, the details of nation-building are also worth writing about. A total of 174 stars are willing to join the film because they have seen the inevitable trend that the Chinese mainland is the center of Chinese-language films.

The status of the Chinese mainland in Chinese-language culture is the same as the dominant status of the US in English-speaking countries.

It has been confirmed by the 2008 Olympic Games and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic in 2009 and there is no room for discussion. The production of The Founding of a Republic happens to confirm this process.

The US movie 2012 also reflects the changes of the China image in Hollywood films, which shows the increased status of China in the US mainstream cultural consciousness.