Breaking binaries : a critical approach to the fifth generation Chinese cinema

Abstract

How to interpret the self-Orientalized representations in the Fifth Generation Chinese films remains an unresolved problem in cultural and film studies. This thesis underlines some of the major theoretical problems which have produced barriers for critical approaches to and understandings of the Fifth Generation phenomenon in Chinese cinema. By reconsidering the notion of power/knowledge in the Foucauldian sense, this work aims to challenge the assumed ontological relation between China and the West in rigid terms of binary oppositions and find an opening from this closure through which the complex and discursive interactions between the two can be critically examined. In this process of breaking the binaries, we are thus demanded to question the categories of culture, such as high vs. popular culture, art film vs. mass entertainment, etc., which take part in shaping our perceptual habits and interpretive politics.