The relationship between film and television and modern social life

It has been nearly a century since American Flahardy took Eskimos as the object of his camera attention and made the result of his attention anthropological. Subsequently, the expression of this "method or behavior" has always been an important topic of visual anthropology, an important branch of cultural anthropology.

For a long time, using the camera as an expression tool to record and explain the different basic social structures and forms of human society has been paid attention to by traditional anthropology as a field material that is "more intuitive than written expression" or accommodated by traditional movies and TV documentaries. The space, path and object of self-expression have never been established in theory. Therefore, as a method or behavior of recording various social structures and forms of human society with a camera, it has always been in a very embarrassing position.

Film and television, a communication tool produced in industrial society, is called "a more decentralized medium, which provides opportunities for regional dialects to express themselves" by McLuhan, and it has a completely different expression from describing objects in words. Its own particularity and expression language have not been accurately explained so far. From the perspective of film and television, it is more professional to standardize some film and television characteristics. As visual anthropology, his unique expression experience and intuitive integrated expression of sound and painting have not attracted enough attention in theory. Visual anthropology didn't express it well in theory. However, as a discipline, if the elements of its basic framework are not defined in theory and the theoretical paradigm is not determined, then its academic value and theoretical significance are doubtful, not to mention the value of "discovering the basic laws of human social behavior and system development-law, morality, religion, art, language, etc." As the theory of A.R. Radcliffe-Brown put it. (1) Social Anthropological Methods Page 23. Shandong People's Publishing House, 1988)

At the same time, there has always been confusion in traditional anthropology that describes objects in words. Malcus and Fischer believe that "because anthropologists themselves rely on descriptive and semi-literary expressions to describe culture, their research distorts the social reality of non-western peoples". Here, they think this is a crisis caused by some kind of expression problem. At the same time, they also believe that we should respond to this because of the influence of the main ideas in Said's book Orientalism. "Its urgent task will still be to reflect on traditional writing methods and explore new ways experimentally." (2) Anthropology as a cultural criticism. Sanlian Bookstore (Beijing First Edition, 1998) In his Second Media Age, mark poster believes that electronic media communication shows a prospect of understanding the subject, that is, the subject is constructed in the configuration of words and practices with historical concreteness. Therefore, "people" can't just refer to westerners, and rationality is not the ultimate goal of human experience. In this sense, the unique expression of film and television itself may have theoretical significance and bring people a new theoretical perspective.

Generally speaking, visual anthropology is concerned about an "underdeveloped" society different from modern society. This was especially true in the era of Flahadi. This academic perspective has formed an academic community for a long time, and the "Orientalism" perspective has occupied a dominant position in the study of cultural anthropology. Use the western historical process and western values to guide the research of non-western society (including social system-legal, economic, religious, political and cultural organizational forms). "'people' only refers to people in the west." However, in recent decades, the research results of sociology, archaeology and other social sciences have proved that anthropological research must consider the expression of cultural diversity, especially in visual anthropology, because of its particularity in expression.

This small, rural natural economy and "primitive" social form is a large number of social realities that still exist in contemporary society, and it is a society whose culture and values are completely different from those of western society. In these societies, there are their own cultural models and cultural spirits. Sumner believes that cultural spirit is the sum of those characteristics that distinguish a group from other groups (Dictionary of Cultural Anthropology, Zhejiang People's Publishing House). Benedict XVI also emphasized that different cultures of human beings should be understood as diversified existence with different value systems. "This is the main theme of every culture, which endows this kind of diversity in culture; What makes culture have a certain pattern is also the main theme of culture, that is, the national spirit. (Theoretical Framework of Cultural Anthropology, edited by Zhuang Xichang, Zhejiang People's Publishing House). This unique national spirit (that is, cultural spirit) determines the overall character of its culture within the nation. This unique cultural type, because of its unique cultural spirit, makes the process of world culture present a pluralistic, parallel and colorful phenomenon, and also provides a visual object for the development of visual anthropology.

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Humans have used visual graphics as a medium of communication for a long time. At present, when discussing the history of human communication, communication generally regards the sequential form of language, writing, printed matter and electronic media as a linear historical process. However, in this long process from language to writing, there is also a stage with graphics as the medium. This point is often overlooked by people. At this stage, graphics, as the product of ideology, assume the role of human communication media. In the study of graphics as human communication media, communication science has not done a thorough investigation and research on visual graphics as communication media. In fact, the spread process of visual graphics has been the most important means of human communication for a period of time. Especially in the carrier of recording the initial ideology of early human beings, in the earliest totem worship of human beings and in the standardization of ceremonies, visual graphics are highly concentrated and abstract in ideology, which has an intuitive influence on human ideology and plays an irreplaceable role in language.

From the archaeological research results, it can be seen that the use of visual media to express anthropological objects and the life and form of a small society can be traced back to human childhood at the earliest. From the stage of cultural history, the appearance of this behavior is inseparable from the emergence and establishment of ideology and superstructure in early human society. Archaeological results have proved that many so-called "decorations" have appeared in stone tools, bone implements and other items unearthed during the caveman period. These "decorations" already have the function of visual media. Jia Lanpo, a famous archaeologist, believes that these "decorations" include drilled pebbles, drilled stone beads, perforated canine teeth of foxes or badgers or deer, slotted bone tubes, perforated shells of turtles, and drilled supraocular bones of herring. All the decorations are exquisite. The decoration of pebbles is drilled from both sides by greenish igneous rocks, and the pebbles selected are very geometric, much like the heart of a chicken worn on the chest of modern women. ..... Almost all the decorative perforations are red, as if they were all dyed with hematite. " . (Jia Lanpo: Peking man's former residence, page 4 1. ) Deer carvings in prehistoric caves in altamira, northern Spain, also showed the emergence of human self-consciousness earlier. Alam, a famous Egyptian art historian, analyzed these cave murals in 15000 BC and around 25000 BC in his History of Middle East Art. He believes: "The pictures people draw in caves show that it is essentially a hunter art by which people express their inner feelings, which reached its peak around 12000 BC. ..... The main form of hunter art is caused by the belief of the leading painter. A painter may think that having the ability to draw animals he is afraid of will give him the power to control them and enhance his ability to subdue them. " (History of Middle East Art, page 2: Yi Ni Aram). Robert Leiden, an American scholar, thinks that these cave murals "have been far away from the origin of human beings and the early remaining visual expressions" (Robert Leiden's Anthropology of Art). Page two. )。 Leiden means to oppose the view that the West has long occupied the academic dominant position in the cultural history: that is, the cultural process of human beings is from cave murals to popular art, and that the process of human civilization should be pluralistic, parallel and progressive. In the book A Course of Beauty, Mr. Li Zehou thinks: "There is not only a long time (hundreds of thousands of years) between the regular body feeling of using tools and the conscious processing of so-called' decorations', but also a fundamental difference in essence. ..... The content of the former is realistic, and the latter is fantasy (imagination); ..... "Decoration" is the product of spiritual production and ideology. ..... is to externalize and freeze people's thoughts and fantasies on these so-called' decorations' objects, which are just materialized activities. ..... is the' humanization' and' objectification' in imagination "(The Course of Beauty, page 3). Here, primitive humans have begun to give some abstract meanings to some substances, and then use them to communicate; It began to record (materialize) human behavior and then used it for circulation. Before the appearance of human characters, visual media was another media used by human beings to communicate besides language. This kind of communication has eight characteristics of ideas. When analyzing the phenomenon that cavemen are "stained with hematite", Mr. Li Zehou pointed out: "The color' red' not only stimulates their physiological feelings (animals can have it), but also contains or provides some conceptual meaning (animals can't have it). ..... In imagination, red itself is endowed with the unique symbolic concept meaning of human (society); ..... primitive human thought activities, namely primitive witchcraft etiquette including religion, art, aesthetics, etc. , even really started "("the course of beauty ",page 5).