Chen Xuguang: Deeply cultivating the "Chinese Narrative" and Telling the "Chinese Story" Well

【Scholar Profile】Chen Xuguang, Professor of Peking University School of Arts, Director of Peking University Film and Television Drama Research Center, Distinguished Professor of "Yangtze River Scholar" of the Ministry of Education, Vice President of China University Film and Television Society, Executive Vice President of Film and Television Education Professional Committee of China Higher Education Association, Member of the Steering Committee of Drama and Film and Television Studies in Colleges and Universities of the Ministry of Education, Vice President of the Theoretical Review Committee of China Filmmakers Association, Researcher of Future Imaging High-end Innovation Center of Beijing Film Academy.

The poet Kitajima once asked in his poem "Answer": "The Ice Age has passed / Why is there ice everywhere / The Cape of Good Hope is found / Why are thousands of sails competing in the Dead Sea?" "Thought-provoking poetic questions reveal the possibility that history is not a linear development, but a tortuous development. Today's world is in the midst of major changes unprecedented in a century, and China will face a series of new opportunities and challenges, which is also destined to assume China's historical responsibility as a responsible major country. I think the same should be true as a humanities and social science worker.

On the occasion of the New Year's Eve, we need wang Yang's wanton and endless "Chinese imagination", but we need a Chinese-style truth-seeking and pragmatism, deeply cultivate the "Chinese narrative", and tell the "Chinese story".

In my opinion, the science fiction films "The Wandering Earth" and "Crazy Aliens" are two rather metaphorical or allegorical texts, representing two kinds of "Chinese imagination" respectively. If "The Wandering Earth" embodies China as a responsible big country with "future imagination", its vision and mission for the survival and development of mankind; "Crazy Aliens" uses a kind of "four or two thousand pounds" of Chinese wisdom to resolve the conflict crisis between people and aliens on the earth, and when facing how people and people, countries and countries, and human beings and aliens get along and communicate, it means the Chinese wisdom of "harmony and difference" and the concept of "community of human destiny".

Looking forward to 2022, I want to do my own thing in a down-to-earth manner, just like the spirit of "speech" established by Mr. Xie Mian at the "Critics Weekend" academic salon of Peking University: "I am here, so I speak.". I wouldn't choose to "lie flat".

In the new year, I will be invited to serve on the executive editorial board of an important selective journal of theoretical criticism. Trembling and trembling, like walking on thin ice, I am deeply willing to rely on my academic conscience and wholeheartedly compile a film and television theory criticism anthology "Film and Television Art" that represents the world's academic instruments. It is not only eclectic, but also to select the best works that can best represent academic vision, academic standards, academic sensitivity, academic vigor and academic skills, but also to gradually form a certain orientation of film and television theoretical research and criticism after a period of selection and editing and academic style shaping.

In the new year, I also tried to further deepen, refine and systematize the theory of "film industry aesthetics" and the theory of "imaginative consumption", which are a bit "but open-minded". Although "Film Industry Aesthetics Research" has already published a monograph in 2021, it feels that there are still many new academic spaces to be expanded. If possible, I would also like to write a monograph on the consumption of film imagination in the next three to five years.

In the new year, I will conclude a major national bidding project "Research on the Integration of Film and Television Drama and Games and Aesthetic Trends". It is hoped that this frontier project established in 2018 can present its own new exploration, new thinking, new connotation and new ideas in terms of the form, format, creation and aesthetics, industry and management of the integration of film and tourism, in terms of theoretical exploration and industrial and technical pragmatism.

In the new year, I would also like to calmly, comprehensively, and deeply sort out and summarize the source, rationalization, and trend of academic research on Chinese cinema since the new century. Needless to say, Chinese films breathe with the development of the times and share a common destiny. After the new crown pneumonia epidemic, Chinese films have faced difficulties and "glory again", and the times have raised too many questions for us, requiring us to constantly face reality, "theoretical expansion" and criticism and pragmatism, and answer the questions of the times.

The future has come, and the torrent is mighty. At this time, we "look up at the stars and step on the earth." Because, "New turns and twinkling stars / The sky is filled with unobstructed / That's five thousand years of hieroglyphs / That's the eyes of future people staring." ”

Editor: Chen Xuanyu