애니메이션 『대어⋅해당(大魚海棠)』 읽기 ― 중화민족 기원서사의 재구성과 당대 중국 관방이데올로기의 재현

Abstract

The film Big Fish and Begonia(2016) is a home-grown Chinese animation in Chinese-style based on the subject matter of mythology and legend. In this film, mythology of the Han and the mythology of one of the northern minorities – the Manchu – are combined, providing a mysterious imaginary world about the origin of the Chinese people. In other words, the combination between a mythology centered on the Han and a northern minority mythology recreates the story about the ancestry and origin of the Chinese people within the cultural industry market of capital and consumption by means of the mainstream ideology. This may be summarized into the two issues of how the mainstream ideology involving the integration and recreation of the Chinese people and its origin can be reproduced and why the Chinese Civilization must be combined with the genes of the sea, specifically, the blue civilization. Past memories for integration and unity are excavated in mythology and legend, and this is carried out under the mainstream ideology aimed at a broad rising of expansion and acceleration propelled by the Chinese government. In this study, the film Big Fish and Begonia examines the context of a mainstream discourse(Chinese Dream) which newly imagines a future Chinese system as well as the strengthening of a sinocentrism that supports it. Currently the Xi Jinping administration is focusing on the formation of a unified national identity beyond the ‘creation of a homogeneous Chinese nation’. This is related to the complicated aspects of conflict that are appearing as the increasingly extreme and frequent independence movements by some minorities in China are combined with various issues like compensation and the economy in accordance with land development and regional development. The Chinese government, thus, is putting out various unprecedented policies both politically and culturally as an attempt at unifying, through the political unit of ‘China’, the various cultural units consisting of blood ties and tribes within China. This is deeply related to the ideology of the Chinese government, specifically the viewpoint of a developmentalism(Chinese Dream) aimed at becoming a world power and the long-held crisis awareness in China that internal chaos threatens the survival of the nation and furthermore is deeply related to outside invasion. Big Fish and Begonia is newly creating a common emotion and memory by summoning and recreating tradition and a national origin through the media space of imagination namely animation. The combination of the Han’s mythology and the Manchu’s minority legend can be interpreted as the addition of the cultural marine elements necessary for pursuing globalization and developmentalism to the civilization of the continent. This can be referred to as a more in-depth and fundamental mobilization for creating a common cultural gene through the self-esteem and identity of the Chinese tradition.