
Future Development Direction of Chinese Musical Film-By Comparing with the American Musical Film
- 1 College of Visual and Performing Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax Campus, VA, USA, 22032
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
With the emergence of musical films in mainland China in recent years, the narrative logic, story, song and dance of musical films cannot attract audiences. This paper is to discuss the future development trend of Chinese musical film. This research compares the advantages and disadvantages of the Chinese musical film The Day We Lit Up The Sky and the American classic musical film Chicago via case studies and literature review. Aiming at the aesthetic analysis of these two musical films, this paper discusses the content, theme, song and dance, awards, box office, audience analysis and so on. The research results show that the development of Chinese film industry is later than the United States and Europe, so there is still a lot of room for progress. This paper only analyzes two musical films with different area styles. Chinese musical films should break out of the conventional plot and use a lot of star cameos to attract audiences. The use of truly high standards of music, high quality dance, high level of art and unique film content to produce Chinese song and dance film, but also need to integrate its unique Chinese characteristics, culture and thought. The development trend of Chinese musical films in the future is to walk out of a road belonging to Chinese characteristics and find a positioning and direction that belongs to China, so as to make them different from Hollywood musical films and Bollywood.
Keywords
Musical films, aesthetic analysis, Broadway, Narrative, Audience
[1]. FEUER, J. (1983). College Course Film: THE HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL. Journal of the University Film and Video Association, 35(4), 70–78.
[2]. Winter, M. H. (1941). The Function of Music in Sound Film. The Musical Quarterly, 27(2), 146–164. http://www.jstor.org/stable/739462.
[3]. Kenrick, J. (2004). History of Musical Film 1927-30: Hollywood Learns to Sing. Musicals 101. com. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from http://www.musicals101.com/1927-30film.htm.
[4]. Gans, A., & Simonson, R., 2003, "Chicago" wins Oscar for best picture. Playbill. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from https://www.playbill.com/article/chicago-wins-oscar-for-best-picture-com-112200.
[5]. Sulock, E. (2012, August). Chicago: A movie musical mockery of the media's razzle dazzle image of murder. Digital Commons @ Salve Regina. Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/pell_theses/83/
[6]. Sparshott, F. E. (1971). Basic Film Aesthetics. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 5(2), 11–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/3331672.
[7]. Gracyk, T. A. (1992). Adorno, Jazz, and the Aesthetics of Popular Music. The Musical Quarterly, 76(4), 526–542. http://www.jstor.org/stable/742475.
[8]. Nina Penner. (2017). Rethinking the Diegetic/Nondiegetic Distinction in the Film Musical. Music and the Moving Image, 10(3), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.5406/musimoviimag.10.3.0003.
[9]. Mitchell, E. (2002, December 27). 'Chicago,' bare legs and all, makes it to film. The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/movies/film-review-chicago-bare-legs-and-all-makes-it-to-film.html
[10]. Zhang, C. 2021 Chinese film market gross box office: world's no. 1 theme film sparks red power, Xinhuanet.com, Retrieved May 27, 2022, from http://www.xinhuanet.com/ent/20220110/2246cbd782124b1c986d890ac73b8e8f/c.html.
[11]. Liu, Y., 2021, "The Day We Lit Up The Sky" is a failure of musical film as well as youth film. Jiemian.com. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://www.jiemian.com/article/6387323.html.
[12]. Haquyingshi, 2021, (July 26). The Sky of Burning Wild Boys scored 4.5 points and earned 140 million yuan at the box office. Netease. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.163.com/dy/article/GFR8COE005179OJ2.html.
[13]. Li, Y., 2017, Do Chinese audiences naturally dislike musical films? Do Chinese audiences naturally dislike musical films? FX361.COM, Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.fx361.com/page/2017/0419/1621363.shtml
[14]. Menéndez-Otero. (2019). The Musical That Pretended It Wasn’t a Musical: Genre and Narrative Style in Once. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 36(8), 666–689. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2019.1593029.
[15]. QIYUE, 2021, (January 21). Does Jay Chou have box office appeal after all? Netease. Retrieved May 27, 2022, from https://www.163.com/dy/article/G0TGRKPO05118O92.html.
[16]. Bezdek, M. A., & Gerrig, R. J. (2008). Musical emotions in the context of narrative film. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 578. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X08005323.
[17]. Gorbman, C. (1980). Narrative Film Music. Yale French Studies, 60, 183–203. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930011.
[18]. Jiao, M., & Zhang, J. (2020). An alternative discourse of modernity in a Chinese monster film: The Great Wall. The Cultural Studies (London, England), 34 (4), 656-674. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2019.1694050.
Cite this article
Duan,X. (2023). Future Development Direction of Chinese Musical Film-By Comparing with the American Musical Film. Communications in Humanities Research,3,9-14.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 1
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).