Loss and Return of Self-identity in Youth Movies:Taking the Chinese Film Us and Them(后来的我们)as an Example

摘要

The year of 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up program.In the wake of 40-year economic development at a great speed,the sharp changes in individual living conditions accompanying urbanization process and the resultant self-identity issues are similar to those situations encountered by Western developed countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,and are reflected in youth movies with reform and opening-up as the background.Thus,based on the self-identity theory,an interpretation of individual development and dilemma in modern Chinese youth movies not only acts as a theoretical attempt,but also broadens the dimension in which such movies are interpreted,creating the value of interaction with society.Taking the youth movie Us and Them(中文片名:后来的我们)as an example,this paper adopts the semiotic approach for text analysis,and abstracts“young girl”,“Beijing”,“sofa”and other symbols from this movie to form the symbolic interpretation of three channels for building self-identity in modern society.Through“modern-traditional”diversion in terms of three dimensionsin the process of self-identity,this movie is found with trial and effort to describe and heal the self from the perspective of creative mentality,forming a metaphor of the loss and return of self-identity amongmodern Chinese.The outcome of analysis indicates that,when encountering self-identity crisis in modern society,the Chinese masses divert culturally from the modern to the traditional,banking on eliminating self-identity crisis with traditional family identity and family culture,which reflects that the family ethics still maintain core values in the modern Chinese mass culture.