중국의 “제국적 전회”와 문화 상상 — 영상 콘텐츠의 담론 반영과 재현을 중심으로

Abstract

China’s NRTA(國家廣電總局, National Radio and Television Administration)is the place that supervises, monitors, and directs the necessary systems and procedures in all stages for establishing policies for the television and Internet contents service management and planning and producing the contents. All video contents in China, such as televisions, documentaries, animations, and films are produced and circulated through the screening and ratification according to the plans and guidelines established in the NRTA. The National Radio and Television Administration presents the main direction of creation and the direction of the maintenance of regulations and systems based on China’s major political meetings. The authorities’ policies and discourses are strategically reflected and reproduced in video contents with a top-down approach. This study analyzes how recently China’s political discourses such as “the Rise of the Great Powers”, “The Chinese Empire”, and “China Dream” are represented and reflected in video contents. First, China has formed modernity, centering around the discourse of the development to a nation-state; however, recently, it has revived the imperial tradition that has been discontinued and seek the re-establishment of self-identity in this process. At this time, political discourses such as “the Rise of the Great Powers”, “China Dream” and “Revival of the Chinese People” have been formed, which came to have significant impacts on the production and planning of video contents. Cultural imagination as a representational practice of the discourses allows China to reconstruct the relationship between history and the world and to seek a cultural identity that can be shared by all members. The video contents dealt in this discussion are television documentary series and historical dramas. These two genres are conveyed through a familiar life media. Documentaries allow the educational reception of discourses in contemporary China through the method of investigative journalism while historical dramas project contemporary China’s position through the process of the rewriting of historical memories. Documentaries and historical dramas can be said to be typical genres in which the ideology of the bureaucracy intervenes in the superficial way of guaranteeing objectivity and historical testimony, respectively. By analyzing the time and contents of the broadcasting of documentaries, “河殤(China Presenting River Elegy)” and “大國崛起(The Rise of the Great Powers),” this study analyzes how they make the people’s memories and perceptions of realities be positioned in the epic of the history of the empire, and how they form China’s image as an empire at home and abroad through “一帶一路(The Belt and Road Initiative)” and “舌尖上的中國(A Bite of China).” Next, through the recent historical drama, “大秦帝國(The Qin Empire)” Series, this study investigates how the process in which Qin achieved the Great Unification and promoted the unification of the world is put into the modern position in the course of the rise of the great powers and how it newly carves the spirit of “Integration of the family and the state(家國一體).” This study also analyzes how the pre-history of the empire is mythicized by restoring a marginal woman in history as an imperial character through “羋月傳(The Legend of Miyue).”