The Influence of Hollywood Movies on Chinese Culture

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  Abstract: With its rapid development in China, Hollywood movies have become indispensable for the Chinese movie market and inevitably exert strong influence on Chinese people. After enough exposure to the movies, people find the differences in culture between America and China, and make imperceptible changes, thus affecting Chinese traditional culture. In this paper, the writer gives a brief introduction of Hollywood’s development in China, and proceeds the paper with analysis of influences that Hollywood movies have brought to Chinese people. The writer illustrates both the positive and negative influences, and analyzes the main causes to those influences. At last, the writer provides some suggestions about culture invasion.
  Keywords: Hollywood movies; positive influence; negative influence; profit
  Introduction
  Since the 20th century, the global culture has undergone a meaningful change. Culture has spread across nations and regions. Contemporary multi-culture is likely to be semiotic culture spread through media network.
  With the rapid development of technology and science, people have made a remarkable leap in movie art. Zhou (2004) states that movie art is not only art or language, and is no longer vaudeville; it is the floorboard of comprehensive social phenomenon. Movies become the carrier of culture, presenting certain social fact to the audience. French film theorist Metz (1994) notes that what people call film is actually a wide-range and complicated phenomenon of social culture, an overall social fact; it is a whole existence involving many aspects which includes vital problems like economy. So when people are exposed to movies, they learn something about certain culture.
  Hollywood, as a representative of American movies, is committed to propagating its local culture to every place in the world. With the popularity of Hollywood movies, more and more people are immersed in American culture. Many people, especially the young, are crazy about “American dream” conveyed through the movies. Hollywood movies come to bring considerable influence on many countries, including China. Elements like dress, hairstyle, music, dance, etc. in the movies have unobtrusively and imperceptibly changed and influenced many people, especially the young. People longing for fashionable and unique life start to get rid of their traditional life style and follow the trend that Hollywood leads. As a result, some people lost their original culture while blindly chasing after certain new things, and some even deviated from social morality and went astray. So it’s necessary to make some research on the influences that Hollywood movies have brought to China, and make people clear about how the culture embedded in Hollywood movies penetrates into their daily life.   This paper will focus on analyzing the influences of Hollywood movies on Chinese culture and finding out the causes to those influences, to make people treat Hollywood movies rationally.
  Development of Hollywood in China
  On August 11, 1896, movie was introduced to the Chinese as a vaudeville program in Shanghai Xuyuan amusement centre. This new invention evoked broad attention and stimulated many people’s interest. From then on, large amounts of American movies had been trafficked to China.
  In the early 20 century, Hollywood came to represent American movie industry and started to anticipate most of the movie market in China. From 1920s to 1940s, Hollywood movies became all the rage in China, and shared 75% of the movie market (Hua, 2010). During this period, American culture was greatly spread. Hollywood had replaced the missionaries, educators, gunboats, businessmen and English literature to become the most important way for China to study western industrial social culture and way of life (Burton, 1934).
  Although Hollywood movies retreated from Chinese movie market since 1949, they turned back in 1980s with the negotiation on GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). In 1994, Chinese Administration of Radio Film and Television decided to import ten Hollywood movies to stimulate the depressed movie market, and The fugitive was the first Hollywood blockbuster released to Chinese public. From then on, Hollywood movies have become more and more popular among Chinese people, and start to earn increasing profit. Nowadays, Hollywood movies become an indispensable part of Chinese movie market.
  Influences of Hollywood Movies on Chinese Culture
  Hollywood movies have played a profound effect on Chinese culture over the years. Fresh things and ideas embodied in the movies capture people’s attention and satisfy their thirst for learning foreign world outside of China. From those movies, people learn more about the world and come to realize the great differences in culture between China and other countries, especially America. They are scrambling to follow the examples presented in the Hollywood movies to make themselves more knowledgeable and fashionable. Indeed, Hollywood movies have brought positive effect on people. However, people, who are not able to distinguish between right and wrong, are strongly influenced by the negative culture, thus they lose themselves and betray their traditional morals. This part will analyze the positive and negative influences of Hollywood movies have brought to Chinese culture.   Positive Influence
  The development and prevalence of American popular culture has an unneglectable impact on Chinese people, especially the young. Hollywood is seen as the leader of fashion trend. Famous designers spare no effort to innovate fashionable elements like dress, hairstyle, music, etc. in the Hollywood blockbusters and those elements are naturally become the target people chase.
  1. A way to see fashion trend
  Dress. Before China carried out reform and opening-up policy, Chinese people held a traditional attitude toward dress. Chinese tunic suit, which has a straight collar and two pockets with lids and buttons, was very common in 1970s. Women were usually in calf-length dress or trousers and black shoes. The color of the dress was very dull; only green, blue, black and grey were in fashion then. With the increase in exposure to Hollywood movies, people were attracted by the shiny dress and started to make some change. Western suit started to replace Chinese tunic suit; bright-color dress, overskirt, high-heeled shoes, etc started to be popular in 1980s. Flared trousers showed by Elvis Aron Presley (The Hillbilly Cat) in his movies became fashionable for a time. During that period, people in flared trousers could be seen at every corner in China. Nowadays, Chinese people are keeping in fashion with people all over the world. Hollywood movies obviously become a fashion guide for them.
  Hairstyle. From 1970s to 1980s, Chinese women were fond of braided hair and straight hair with a centre part. While in the movie Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn cut her long hair into a bob, which was imitated by many women later. In the 1990s, curly hair in many movies came to gain popularity among young people. Public aesthetic interest underwent imperceptible change. Diversified hairstyles are created by hair stylists and come into our sight.
  Music. With the popularity of Hollywood movies, Hollywood music is sung worldwidely. The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz present vivid and fresh music style and scene, which strongly inspired Chinese musicians. Songs in The Graduate and Titanic are classic and favored by many people. Combined with western music, Chinese music has made great achievement. Singer stars like Jay Chou, JJ Lin, Anson Hu, etc. whose music blended with hi-pop, R&B, etc. are the most popular singers in China.
  Dance. Folk dance used to be the most common style at different ceremonies before China’s cultural revolution. In the early 1980s, although people got to learn some western dance styles like waltz from the movies, they regarded them as indecent behavior. In Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta showed a new dance style to the Chinese, which was called “DISCO”. People swing their body with strong music rhythm and dance freely as they like. “DISCO” is very easy to stimulate people’s passion and make them be immersed in the music. Although “DISCO” was introduced to China about 20 years ago, it enjoys amazing popularity. It’s still indispensable in the ball at present.   2. An effective way to learn language
  Language and culture are inseparable. Each nation holds its own unique culture which is mostly manifested in the form of language. Language is employed to record people’s speech and behavior, conveying a nation’s culture. Hollywood movies, as kind of mirror of American culture, make great contribution to English learners. In Chinese ESL classroom, Hollywood movies become one of the most effective materials to facilitate Chinese students on listening comprehension. Movies are of great value in arousing students’ interest in English and transferring language and culture. Through movies, language and culture are epitomized and transmitted, so undoubtedly, speech is a typical embodiment and an imitated model as well (Zhou, 2007). Providing comprehensible input in which students are interested in less anxious situations is the best method for second language acquisition (Krashen, 1985), and movies provide that situation.
  3. A way to promote culture assimilation
  In America, freedom, equality, democracy and individualism are highly valued. They are the essentials of the American mind and the American dream. In contrast, Chinese people put great emphasis on solidarity, harmony and community. In the age of highly developed media culture, people, especially the young who prefer to try new things have more opportunities to make contact with foreign culture, leading to the fusion of culture.
  With the rapid development of cross-cultural communication, and the impact of foreign media, it’s certain that there will be more connections between each country. A11 the cultures are confronted with the same situation: opportunity and challenge. On one hand, a culture has more opportunities to absorb the fresh ideas from another culture. For instance, “Go Dutch”, “western festival”, “western parenting”, etc. are very popular among Chinese people. People have accepted those foreign ideas and fuse them with their traditional values. On the other hand, it faces the challenge, maybe assimilation or integration or even disappearing. In a word, there will be multi-ideology in China with the impact of other cultures.
  Negative Influence
  Everything has two sides. Driven by profit, film-makers exaggerate the social fact and portray an unreal world to the audience, which mislead the people who know little about American culture. Those twisted values inevitably exert a negative influence on young generation.
  Violence. Violence is an abundantly fictionalized component to film-making today. Bone crunching, blood spattering, gun shoot and explosion are almost the indispensable elements in current Hollywood blockbusters. “The disproportionate emphasis on violent behavior only intensifies with the export of American entertainment” (Medved, 2004, p.772). People, especially teenagers, who are often exposed to action movies, are likely to be affected psychologically. Research shows that children will become more aggressive after massive exposure to violent shows. The increase in teenager crime rate is a clear example.   Sexual indulgence. Non-marital intercourse has likewise become commonplace in Hollywood movies. Intimate behavior is depicted as common and casual, whether between husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, same-sex couples, or groups, which produces an enormous shock on Chinese conservative sexual attitude. However, the risks of sexual indulgence are rarely showed or presented in the movies, and nobody is abused or punished for that unethical behavior. Influenced by the sexual attitude portrayed in the movies, some people violate ethnic morals.
  Drug and alcohol abuse. In Hollywood movies, both male and female heroes smoke like chimneys, which is regarded as a fashion, winning over a lot of people, especially the young. Drug and alcohol flooded the parties and bars in the movies, and only enjoyment is showed. The negative consequences are never presented in the movies. Young adults with a little knowledge about right and wrong are misled. Drugs and alcohols are taken by the young for excitement and thrills.
  By appealing to the human sense of adventure, the thirst for excitement, and the lust for sex and blood without honestly revealing their results, Hollywood negatively affects the world.
  Causes to the Influences
  There are a lot of factors resulting in the popularity of Hollywood movies and broad influence on other cultures. Since it’s difficult to analyze the intricate causes, the paper will only focus on two major factors: thirst for fresh things and ideas, and profit.
  Thirst for Fresh Things and Ideas
  Almost all the people are curious about the foreign world and never satisfied with their knowledge. Since not everybody has the chance to go abroad and experience the foreign culture personally, movies become an important access for people to the foreign world. American culture becomes the target for the dominant international status of the United States. Hollywood movies, as a synonym for American movies, provide a window for the outside to learn American culture.
  A questionnaire is adapted from Liu (2009) and whose copies in Chinese are distributed to 500 undergraduates in Renmin University of China. The purpose of this survey is to learn students’ motives of watching U.S. movies, especially Hollywood blockbusters and in what way they are influenced by American movies. The questionnaire is translated as follows: A. to learn English; B. to understand Anglo-American culture; C. for entertainment; D. to follow the trend of watching fashion; E. to provide a common topic when chatting with classmates; F. to promote exchange with friends by watching movies; G. watching movies is a daily habit, just like shopping, etc.; H. to pursue the stars; J. watching movies is a consumer fashion like consuming McDonald’s, KFC, and so on; J. the movies may provide a variety of content which we are not familiar with; K. longing for the western way of life; L. to find out solutions to the problems in the life; M. others. The following table is the result of 448 valid responses.   From the survey result, we can find out that to learn language, to understand Anglo-American culture and for entertainment are the main purposes for students to watch Hollywood movies. In turn, movies affect them in those aspects.
  Profit
  Movie commercialism and economic penetration into culture lead to negative change in some film-makers, who see the pursuit of profit as their only purpose. In order to meet some people’s need for excitement and lust for sex, film-makers place intense emphasis on violence, and inventive variety of anti-social behavior (Medved, 2004). They exaggerate the negative culture and even create “culture”, resulting in people’s misunderstanding of American culture. Media network is accelerating the flow of information, and young adults eyeing at Internet are likely to fall victims to the negative American culture.
  Conclusion
  As a typical way to get access to American culture, Hollywood movie is like a two-side sword. On one hand, it opens the door for people to learn American culture without going abroad; on the other hand, it strongly influence people’s moral values, which shocks and challenges Chinese traditional culture. With the culture assimilation, people have learned more about the world and they are pleasant to follow the pop trend, but many people have lost their heritage culture while absorbing fresh ideas. So strategies need to be worked out to solve this problem. This paper offers the following suggestions:
  * Strengthen education in national culture to reinforce its dominant status.
  * Enhancing people’s understanding of other countries to meet their thirst for learning the world outside China.
  * Cultivate rational attitude towards movies.
  Only when people treat Hollywood movies rationally, may people wisely deal with the cultural differences between America and China.
  References
  [1]Burton, W. (1934). Chinese reactions to the cinema. Asia. 10, 77-80.
  [2]Hua, M. D. (2010). Hollywood movies and Chinese pop culture under the global neoliberalism. Retrieved October 11, 2011, from http://www.bjposs.gov.cn/bjpssweb/n33154c6.aspx.
  [3]Medved, M. et al (2004). Rereading America: that’s entertainment? Hollywood’s contribution to anti-American abroad. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
  [4]Metz, C. (1991). Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  [5]Liu, Q. S. (2009). Analysis of American movies on Chinese college students from cross-cultural communication perspective. Journal of Hebei University of Economics and Trade. 9(2), 64-67.
  [6]Zhou, J. (2004). On globalization and construction of Chinese contemporary advanced culture. Economy and Social Development. 9(9), 137-140.
  [7]Zhou, X. J. (2007). Feasibility and strategies for ESL teaching through movies. Journal of Chinese. 6, 117-120.
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