중국영화 비평을 위한 좌표들 ― 영화산업 환경의 변화를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper suggests a new way of understanding recent blockbuster films from China, considering what happened to the Chinese film market. Since the establishment of the New China (PRC), the Communist Party focused on using films as a tool of propaganda and political indoctrination, seeing the film industry as a “state-led business.” The reform and opening-up era brought a certain level of marketization into the culture sectors, including the film sector. Still, the change was not fundamental as demonstrated by the birth of the “main melody film,” which testified the Party took Chinese films for bearers of official state ideology, keeping them away from the growing marketization. This viewpoint was adopted widely and remains unchallenged, resulting in the recent successful Chinese blockbuster films still categorized as “main melody films.” This paper raises a question to this viewpoint, especially the validity of the concept “main melody film.” As we all know it, commercial films globally represent the mainstream ideologies. Still, only Chinese films are unchangeably labeled as “main melody films” (the term of which implicate the state-led production system). This labeling assumes that, firstly, we can draw clear lines between the state and the market, or the politics and economics, in China’s context; secondly, they are opposing each other, and the winner is the state. These assumptions might be valid during the period when the state took control of the Chinese film industry. Since then, the film industry has grown significantly with diversified emerging industries from production and distribution to consumption, which would undermine the validity of the said assumptions in the present context. Nowadays, the Chinese film market has turned great with China’s economic growth and overseas films’ frequent landing. As the main actor of the market, the Chinese film consumers express diverse needs and respond actively to the nation or state issues, being conscious of China’s new position as one of the G2. The film production system has also changed a lot, not only being highly “industrialized” but also being connected with high-end digital and IT technologies and other emerging areas. As the top player of the country’s culture industries, the film industry is speaking with its own voice now. As a result, in the recent Chinese film industry and market, people consume the mainstream ideologies through films, without the state’s manipulative interventions. The big-budget and micronarrative blockbuster films are selected by the market, not by the state, as a proper tool to show off rapidly evolving technologies and echo the mainstream ideologies. Against this backdrop, we need to develop a new understanding of Chinese films that incorporates the film industry’s observed changes.