Abstract
The new mainstream cinema in China, instead of providing a simple mixture or hybrid of artistic styles and genres, advocates that audiovisual spectacles created by film technologies should "break into" the established experience of audiences and their customary protective mechanism of consciousness so as to produce a psychological strike. Meanwhile, new mainstream cinema also creates an aesthetic experience, through which the audience are drawn deeply into the film thanks to their surrealistic sensory and emotional engagement. The surrealistic sensory experience brings "shock" to the audience, while emotional identification results in "immersion." Provided with such aesthetic effects, the new mainstream film, aspiring to spread positive energy through the holistic conceptualization of the state and nation, also finds the greatest denominator among all aesthetic characteristics—thus aesthetic values of universal significance—to unite the broadest cinematic audience. Through fusion of genres as well as intersection between the unreal and the real, it ultimately provides the audience with complex experience that collapses their established and obstinate conceptualizations.
First Page
168
Last Page
177
Recommended Citation
Lu, Xiaofang. 2021. "Shock and Immersion: The Complex Aesthetic Experience of Chinese New Mainstream Film." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 41, (4): pp.168-177. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol41/iss4/13
