Communicate traditional Chinese aesthetic ideals through culture-themed TV programs

Under the impact of globalization, mainstream Chinese television media as a key ideological medium needs to proceed from local culture, demonstrate firm cultural confidence, fight for discourse power in a global arena, explore communication methods with Chinese characteristics, and promote traditional Chinese aesthetic ideals. In recent years, domestic original culture-themed television programs have seen rising popularity. "Chinese Poetry Congress", "Everlasting Classics", "Reader", "National Treasure", and other phenomenal original television programs appear on TV screen like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, which is a manifestation of cultural self-consciousness. These programs interpreted Chinese culture from different angles, and highlighted the Chinese manner.

In the globalized rhetorical context, the globalization of cultural communication still faces many difficulties. Globalizing cultural communication means that the cultures of dominant nations and ethnic groups can transcend time and space, be perceived and accepted by other cultures. Some will even lead to cultural hegemony. As a result, the cultures of weaker nations or ethnic groups might need to actively or passively move towards the dominating cultures, become followers of dominant cultures, which will induce cultural anxiety. In addition, economic globalization might also cause societies to become dull in aesthetic emotions. In a consumerist society, people's senses are constantly stimulated, emotions are constantly exchanged, where emotional ecology becomes imbalanced. In an information society, people's time is more fragmented, their mentality is restless, and their spirit cannot find a resting place, and there is a desperate need for aesthetic salvation.

Large numbers of TV programs that transplant, imitate, or plagiarize those from dominant cultures, losing aesthetic confidence and traction in domestic audiences, this phenomenon are ubiquitous in weaker countries. To please the public, television art is inclining towards vulgar and entertaining tendencies. In recent years, as China's comprehensive national strength has remarkably increased, many people began reexamining the values of Chinese traditional culture. As a result, television programs with Chinese characteristics are flourishing together, which is responsible for the present diversity in the landscape of Chinese TV culture.

From the viewpoint of aesthetic experience, only when culture and art express local aesthetic ideas, can win stimulate empathy and resonance from members of the public, evoke national cultural memories, and strengthen community cultural identity. In recent years, the government actively propelled innovation and strive for excellence for television programs, emphasized the inheritance of Chinese traditional culture, and promoted Chinese stories with Chinese characteristics and the spirit of the times. Based on this, culture-themed television programs abundantly excavated resources from Chinese traditional culture, became innovated in both content and form, to express Chinese people’s emotions and establish collective identity.

"Chinese Poetry Congress" uses magnificent audio-visual effects and brilliant segment designs to let audiences recollect the Tang and Song poetry. "Everlasting Classics" uses modern music to reinterpret classical poetry. "Reader" uses warm voices to transmit the beauty of literature and emotions, and aroused the entire population's enthusiasm for reading. "National Treasure" holds its foothold in the "museum collection of national cultural relics”. It uses scene reconstruction to illustrate the previous and present lives of the cultural relics, and to endow them with vitality.

These culture-themed television programs used national cultural symbols, combined different methods of stage art, mobilized theater and drama, drawing, dancing, calligraphy, martial arts and other artistic elements to shape an aesthetic image which accords with Chinese people's habits of appreciation. Behind the symbols of “Chinese images" are vivid historical figures, rich and thick national culture and a unique style of aesthetic taste. Focusing on the overall observation of Chinese traditional cultural aesthetic images, these programs both highlighted and enhanced our collective national identity, and represented the cultural self-consciousness and responsible undertaking of mainstream media.

Under the impact of cultural globalization, heterogeneous cultures will inevitably collide, which will stimulate the consciousness of cultural localization. This may trigger "conservatism" and "radicalism". The former is a complete affirmation of indigenous culture, but is inclined to reject foreign things blindly. The latter is a complete repudiation of local culture, and it is prone to be incorporated into the dominant culture. Neither attitude is conducive to the reproduction of local culture. Every nation and country has its unique culture and art, in the general observation of history, art is always developing through exchange and integration, where an all-embracing approach is normalcy for the innovative development of art.

Chinese culture-themed television programs should bear the responsibility of cultural self-consciousness, reestablish the confidence of Chinese aesthetics, bring traditional Chinese aesthetics to the world, realize the ideal realm of "every beauty is beautiful, we need to appreciate the beauty of others as do to one's own, and the world will hence become harmonious."

Contributed by Wang Guiting, Contract Research Fellow at the Research Center for the Theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in Fujian Province; Liu Dan, Teacher at the Cross-Strait Communication Innovation Research Center of Huaqiao University

Translated by Zhang Junye