Phantom Audio-Visionof the New Era films:History,Memory and Subject's Patterns

• In Event: Politics of Memory: How to Rewrite and Reshape China in 1980s

Abstract

The New Era films are characterized by Phantom Audio-Vision, the terminology I appropriate from Michel Chion to defer the subject’s pattern and his or her historical memory on the Chinese screen in 1980s. The curtain fall of Great Culture Revolution was resulted in a complicated situation for the socialist ideologies. As one of its symptoms, many Chinese films encountered with the common dilemmas such as the memorial short circuit, the expressive blockage for subjectivity, and others. On the one hand, the uncorrespondence of sound, music and voice to the picture made the dislocation of the past and the present forgrounded. On the other hand, the filmic narrative and its ideological legitimacy were supported by the ghost-like voice-off imposed on the picture by some unseen institutional enunciator. Therefore, on the Chinese screen in 1980s, the social reality was suspended and procrastinated in a newly opened historical horizon.

Author

• Bai Sun, Ph.D.