A Comparison of the Differences in Terrorist Cultures between China and America

1 Introduction

By far, it has become fashionable for young people to watch the scary movies. Most of them like to watch scary movies at night, scared to death but felling excited. Scary movies are good practice to arouse people’s courage. In recent years, "the Phantom Love"(China), "Alien"(America), "Jaws"(American) and so on are at all the rage. Why scary movies become so popular? It is connected with social environment and culture. The scary movies reflect the cultural angst and inevitable existence of the regional disparity. Cultures vary in different regions, which make it difficult for us to understand American scary movies. Therefore, the comparative study of different cultures between Chinese and American scary movies is of great significance.

1.1 The review of the present researches

No matter in and abroad, the scholars have accumulated abundant experience in the research of scary movies, which results in large number of works in this field during the last ten years. For example: "Terrorist Movie Hundred Years", "Black" Nightmare "Trail -Discusses Hollywood Horror film Development Four Historical stage", "Discussed the Horror film", "Humanity's Terror, Anxious Point of view Probe --- Modern Terrorist Movie Studied" and so on, in which they did the researches on the scary movies from different aspects. For example, “the research of Horror film appeared recent years” analyzed the terrorist movie by dividing the terrorist styles; and the "Humanity's Terror, Anxious Point of view Probe --- Modern Terrorist Movie Studies" study the terrorist movie from their origins.

However, the comparative study of terrorist movies is still in its infancy. This kind of article is relatively rare, as in the article "the difference and similarities of scary movie between Western and Eastern in my eyes”, the author considers the western-style scary movies equaling “the high technology” plus “hipping”; and Chinese-style scary movie equaling “Suspense” plus “artistic conception”. (Chong 2002:81) It is a survey of the differences between Chinese and America terrorist movies. Through the medium of cinematography that develops at an extremely rapid pace, American scary movie has produced a lot of spectacular horrible images. It is an effect used to produce scenes that cannot be achieved by normal techniques; for example, “the new star war movie” has lots of technical razzle-dazzle. And in the article “scary movie—the eager in the heart by human”, the author divides American scary movies into four styles: 1.ghosts and monsters: "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Night of the Living Dead"; 2.abnormal killers: “The Silence of the Lamb", “Scream"; 3. the mutant: "Anaconda", "Lake Placid"; 4. Science fiction: "Alien", "Resident Evil". (He Xiaofang 2005:54-55)

In recent years, some scholars who study on the relationship between movie and culture have argue that it is never useful to ask question about movies out of its cultural context. There are some articles about the interrelationship between movie and culture, like "American History and Movie", "From Three Angles to Analyze American Movie" and so on.

1.2 The shortage of these researches

To sum up, the researches on scary movies involve much work of the comparison between scary movie and culture and the comparative study of scary movie. The evolving trend of economic globalization is a distinct characteristic of our time. Indeed, with the advent of globalization and knowledge-based economy, cultural creativity has been recognized as an impetus to the progress of society and economy. The regional disparity of terrorist movie would be gradually reduced since globalization is initiated. It is possible to change the view of scary movies from the above aspects to the intercultural exchange. This paper attempts to look at the issue of cultural differences from the aspects of the social factor, human nature, ideational difference and religious beliefs.

2 The history of Chinese and American scary movies

During a history of nearly I00 years, the Hollywood terrorist movies have been keeping pace with the times continuously since the progress of movie technology as well as social and the cultural vicissitude. Looking over the development of Hollywood scary movies, American scary movies might be approximately divided into four stages: the newly established time (before the 1930's); the formative time (1930s-1940s); the type phase (1950s-1980s) and the type fusion time (the late 1990s). (Li Zhiqiang 2005:1) On the contrary, Chinese scary movie is still on the very early stage. During the childhood of Chinese movie, a lot of supernatural movies are produced, ranging from the King of Hell to the town and village gods belonging to the nether world, and from the Emperor of Heaven to all the various gods and spirits belonging to the celestial world. During the mid 1940s and late 1940s, the main genre of movie has been established. But afterwards it has inevitably changed a little. The most likely reason for this is the strong influence of Confucianism. The first domestic terrorist movie “the Phantom Love " blared from television in 1937. During the past half century, China had only produced a few terrorist movies. One of them was the Phantom Love. In recent years, great achievements have been made in domestic scary movies. A number of excellent movies have emerged, such as "the lonely spirit in an old building"《黑楼孤魂》 (1989), "Opium Smugglers"《夜走鬼城》 (1989), "the Foggy House"《雾宅》(1993), "Oddness of Old Mirror"《古镜怪谈》 (2000), "Cameraman" 《闪灵凶猛》(2001), "Ghost" 《凶宅幽灵》(2002)," Midnight Fright"《午夜惊魂》 (2003), "the Game of Killing" 《天黑请闭眼》(2004) and so on.(Shi Chuan 2006:13)

3 The differences in Chinese and American scary movies

    Let me give you a comparison between Chinese and American scary movie. I will deal with this problem from three aspects: 1.different origins of terrorist culture; 2.different styles of scary movies; 3. different terrorist effects.

3.1 Different origins of terrorist culture

The United States is said to be the centre of the terrorist culture. “This hobby can trace its history back to the beginning of last century,” says David J.Skal, author of The Monster Show: a Cultural History of Horror. A monster renowned in folklore and myth, in particular the “vampire” was played by some dwarves and savage, which attracted the crowd at a carnival. Scary movie came into fashion after the depression of the1930s. The lives of people were worsened as a result of the economic crisis. As a result, the mass of people piled into the cinema to watch scary movie. The scary movie was not only a way of releasing oneself, but also the reflection of the restless atmosphere in the age. And the film “Germany Ancient Pulls", "Scientific Odd person", "Incarnation Doctor" came into being at this time. After World War II, the war aroused people's horrific psychology, they worried about the out of control of high tech development and the disaffection of social condition, which made the scary movies popular. (Skal 2005:2)

China has a long history of 5,000 years. Its culture of ghosts became prevalent during the Qin and Han Dynasties, and it was particularly prosperous in Sui and Tang dynasties. The legends have been written down from the old days, e.g.: "Searching for Spirits", "LIAO ZHAI ZHI YI "and so on. (Shi Chuan 2006:11) However, Chinese culture of ghosts was also suppressed by Confucianism. By contrast, the narrative of the Chinese ghost is more temperately than that of America.

3.2 Different styles of scary movies

   The bottom line of different styles of Chinese and American scary movies has always been culture.  There are three styles of American scary movies: 1.abnormal killers, a person with an antisocial personality, especially one manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior. The representative movie of this kind is “Alienations” and “Scream”. The characters in this kind of movie are the abnormal person; therefore its main performance is murder. Under this circumstance, the movie is unavoidably filled with blood. 2. The bloody corpse “Prom Night”、“A Nightmare On Elm Street”; 3. Science fiction: “nightmare at hitter creek”、 “Resident Evil”. The terrorist character of this type is the most lethal form for human being, and its image is ugly appearance in legends.

On the contrary, Chinese terrorist movie is still in its infancy. The style of scary movie has not been formed. According to my analyses, Chinese scary movie may generally be defined as "the person plays the role of the ghost, catches the unprincipled person", it can also be called “ghost movie” in a sense. Like " Phantom Lover "," Foggy Night", "The Fog House" and so on, take the " Phantom Lover " for example, movie’s leading actor is a genius singer whose face has been deformed. He is a handsome singer falling in love with the daughter of warlord, since he is a revolutionary member; the love comes out with no result. And the warlord’s understrapper disfigures him. Then he invents false news that he is dead. Every night he sings in the theater and people consider it as a ghost. At the end, he guides people to catch the murderer.

3.3 Different terrorist effects

Different terrorist effects manifest different cultures between Chinese and American. The difference is similar to that between Eastern painting in the impressionistic manner and the Western oil color painting, the feeling of oil painting is clear at a glance, the painting in the impressionistic manner has ulterior motives.

Different terrorist effects between Chinese and American scary movies are reflected on the artistic technique --- Visual terror in America and Psychological terror in China. American scary movies stress on the visual stimulus, the bloody massacre plots frequently appear in the film, which belongs to the field of force aesthetics and causes cruel feeling to human beings. For example: the “Alien Resurrection” uses the ugly organisms to show the terror. The ugly organisms look like the ancient dinosaur, strength and hugeness. It keeps eating human being for a mouth and the body of human being is found horribly mangled, hardly to be recognized. In Chinese scary movie, there are few bloody massacre plots. It mainly depends on the function of music. It puts intense psychological stress on the audience and creates the psychology terror. Its visual modeling is the gloomy image. For example: "The lonely spirit in an old building” of 1980s, although its synopsis looks like a Hollywood movie, it attaches great importance on creating the horrible atmosphere, rather than the bloody plots. In short, the American scary movie is to be “viewed”, but the Chinese scary movie stresses “the feeling”. Without a real object in the material world, it may cause big terror on the spirit of human beings.

4 The differences of culture reflected in Chinese and American scary movies

Movie is the product of art, and its basic function is to exhibit all the aspects of the objective world. Culture is the most important part of the spiritual civilization. Human cannot produce the movie without the objective world as well as the culture. Although the values determine the thought of people, the cultural background and the psychology also influence it a lot. The three elements above are naturally the standard rules of producing and appreciating a movie. Movie is a manner of cultural displaying which draws people’s attention on the society. Culture is the foundation of movie, and movie, in turn, enriches culture.（Cai ShengQin 2003:4）

4.1 Different religious beliefs

In this part, the author will take the blood corpse movie of America and ghost movie of China as examples to discuss their different religious beliefs. America, as a relatively young country, does not have confused history and traditional culture. His blood corpse series is inherited from Germany expressionist master. The source of the blood corpse is the folklore and the literary, and the legend of the blood corpse has been widely spread in the Western countries. America takes the blood corpse related to their religious belief --- Christianity as the theme of film.

The culture of ghosts has long history in China. According to the archaeologist, the original religion that presumes the existence of ghosts and gods came into existence in the Paleolithic Age. There are many books about the legends of ghosts, such as "Shan HaiJing" and "Searches for God to record". (Wang Jin 2005:77) Most of the Chinese embrace Buddhism, and they generally believe in the existence of ghosts. They always use the “ghosts” as the reverse roles in the scary movie, for example: "midnight ghost", in which the doorkeeper and her daughter are disguised by the ghost who scares away the new owner of the house.

However, Chinese scary movie is influenced by many factors, such as the traditional Confucianism, “four modernizations” advocated by Chinese government and the initiative spiritual civilization construction. Take the movie “The lonely spirit in an old building” as example, in the movie, there appears the ghost image, and the criminal has not been punished according to the law, but at the end of movie, the last lens shows that the patients were telling story in a mental hospital, which carries out the subversion to the entire piece. It tells us that this fable only stems from the neurosis people's imagination. Therefore, the scary movie mostly revolved the subjects of "to murder with a borrowed knife ", "terribly suspicious and fearful by misunderstanding" and the" the fable ". And it is the reason for Chinese scary movie to be restricted in the style of "the person to play the role of the ghost, and catches the unprincipled person". Chinese movie can describe the ghost, but it should be put into the ancient times, and then you will be allowed to display the ghost justifiable. It can be considered that there isn’t any true fishy movie among modern Chinese scary movies.

4.2 Ideational differences

This section will emphasize on the scientific fiction films to compare the ideational differences between Chinese and American scary movies. In the history of Chinese film, there is seldom fiction movie related to science, whereas America is on the contrary. The reason of this phenomenon is the ideational differences between China and America, that is, the inertia thinking pattern of China and the transcending one of America.

Inertia thinking pattern refers to the thinking pattern which follows the former line of thought and ends other manners of thinking. (Li Shoulong 2006:54) Once we mention the scientific fiction films, most Chinese may regard it as the patent belonging to westerners, as there isn’t proper technology for us to film this kind of movie. What’s more, such kind of movie would cost a large amount of money that we are not able to afford. Transcending thinking pattern refers to the breakthrough of the old manner of thinking. (Li Shoulong 2006:55) American is well known for its taking things developmentally. The scientific fiction films are the very symbol of looking forward. It is established in the social reality, indicting the social problem of the future.

Chinese incline to looking for the basis from the history when they meet problems, which has become a custom of thinking, being reflected in the large number of ancient costume films. This kind of film shows the profound cultural background of our country. On the contrary, as we know, America is a relatively young country with a short history, so the background of its scary movie is from either the real lives or the imagination of the future.

It is of great practical significance to mention the influence of the science. So in order to produce good science fiction movies, Chinese film director must breakout the traditional pattern of thought

4.3 Human nature

This part will pursue the difference between Chinese and American scary movie from the aspect of the human nature. America is bold, China is dreary; American pursues the visual impact just like in Hollywood's movie, the feeling in the visual is intense, bloody, violent, e.g.: “Scream”, “The Shining”, the terrorist role in this kind of movie is “person", but their risk lies in that they are the metamorphosis person, "the murder" is its main performance of metamorphosis. So the movie is unavoidably filled with the smell of blood, and then handles the sharp weapon with blood to pursue slaughter, which becomes the movie’s terrorist origin. Chinese pay attention to the thought, inclining to embark from human's innermost feelings, as they regard the innermost feelings as the true terror.

American people like to face a problem squarely and speak frankly, straight to the point. When they communicate with other people, there’s no over chin, they also bear themselves without ceremony. In the office, you will discover that the white-collar does not put on the coat or without the necktie; and in the university campus, professor wears jean to attend class. (Zhou Feng 2004:56-57) Simultaneously, American speaks frankly; they do not like to beat around the bush to show politeness, they like to express their own viewpoint and the opinion frankly. Such human nature carries some effect on the direct-viewing violence and blood in its scary movie.

The trait of Eastern culture is humility in learning. Chinese hold the moderate views, which lead to their manner of handling matters quite temperately. For example, when you offer Chinese people something to drink, they will refuse at first, and you should make a second offer. It clearly shows that Chinese people is modest. As being reflected in the terrorist movie, it is lack of terrorist dynamics. Most of the people think that domestically produced scary movies are not horrible at all, as they cannot apply themselves to the bloody scenes because of the inspectional policy of Chinese movie. Rather, they focus on the psychological movie. However, the director does not have a good grasp of horror, so the gap in the degree of horror is wide between Chinese and American scary movies.

4.4 Culture sources

     It is well known that America is a very young country. Its short history causes the little displaying of traditional culture in Hollywood scary movies, in other words, it lacks essential cultural trait. Therefore, the modern movie armed with high-tech tells us that even if the Hollywood movie continuously indulges in the reappearance of the humanity, it is only able to locate in the surrealism, the super realism or the futurism.

On the contrary, China has glorious terrorist culture. There are many elements in Chinese traditional culture which can be adopted in the horror films, for instance, "Chatting with the ghosts and demons in the Room". But because of the restriction of the movie policy and that of the spiritual civilization construction, most popular themes of scary movies such as the spirit, the ghost, the superpower and the murder are rather sensitive, regarding the national situation of China; At the same time, many people in China dare not watch movies with terrorist themes, and it greatly reduced the terrorist degree of Chinese scary movies. Such a phenomenon will certainly impose influence on the Chinese scary movie which focuses on the psychological shock.

4.5 The social factors reflecting different cultural connotations

Scary movie always embodies the cultural anxiety. The content of the scary movie may vary with different countries, areas and races. Scary movie is a mirror of the culture and race. In the scary movie, there is close relationship between the content and the historical culture, as well as the social reality. Some of the scary movies display the frightened memory of human history, some of them reflect the religious taboo, some of them reconsider the society morals, some of them express the threat from the realistic society and some of them express people’s worrying about the future world. The selection of material in the scary films cannot be isolated with the deep historical culture and the real life.

The representative works of the bloody corpse series is "Night of takes the Live Corpse", “Fierce clever street" and so on. Take the "Night of takes the Live Corpse" as an example; it breaks the traditional social values of America. This kind of scary film breaks the traditional morals, taunts the social order, displays the danger of daily life, and reveals that the terror may happen at anytime and anywhere. It reflects the trend of returning to the tradition of 1960s and 1970s when the liberalism is in flood. （Li Zhi Qiang  2005:89）

Abnormal homicidal mania series is related with the psychoanalysis theories. It opens a door to the modern scary movie, since then the scary movie starts to pay attention to the real life. The story in the movie” Alienations” is from a true story of real life, with the leading character bearing dual personalities（Li Zhi Qiang 2005:90）. This movie is with practical significance, initiating the audience to reconsider the society and the human nature.

Heterogeneous series belongs to the scientific fantasies which concern with the human being‘s fear toward the outer space. This kind of movie is related with the humanity’s oppose against blindly following the science and technology. Since the 1970s, the America-led western society has made an unprecedented progress in the aspects of science, technology, the implementation of the outer space plan, the widely application of the DNA technology and so on. All of these have brought huge wealth and great convenience to the human beings, but the negative factors, such as the environmental pollution and the threat from the outer space make people scared as time goes by.

The Chinese scary movie is also the reflection of the social problems. “Phantom Lover” describes a Chinese misery. From the cruel behavior of people who has the great power, we can see the Chinese social problems at the beginning of Chinese modern times. (Zuo Tengzhongnan 2005:1) And “The lonely spirit in an old building " is a satire movie against the society. The movie lists reasons for the Great Cultural Revolution, so it can also be called terrorist movie.

5 Conclusions

In fact, film reflects the reality and the essence of society, and it is naturally the symbol of culture. Researches on the differences between China and America will generally encourage people to reconsider the culture of the film. Therefore, this research does have positive effects.

The purpose of the scary movies is not to scare people. After all, movie is considered as an indispensable part of art, and is of cultural significance. The scary movie embodies an anxiety of culture and society. The monster appearing in the film is the exaggerated and distorted reflection of the folk cultures, no matter it originates from the religious book, the folklore spirit, the wild animals or the human world’s abnormal murderer, it is with certain value.

The growth of intercultural communication as a filed of study is based on a view of history that clearly demonstrates people and cultures, which have been troubled by a persistent inability removed by space, ideology, appearance, and behavior. It is obvious that increased contact with other cultures makes it imperative for us to make a concerted effort to get along with and to try to understand people whose beliefs and backgrounds may be vastly different from our own. The ability, through increased awareness and understanding, to peacefully coexist with people who are not in our own neighborhoods could be the decisive factor in maintaining world peace.

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