通过《肖申克的救赎》审视文化欣赏差异

1、跨文化交际学期论文学号：20094092219从肖申克的救赎审视文化欣赏差异looking at cultural appreciations differences from shawshank redemptionname: zhang laninstructor: wang yancollege: arts & sciencemajor: englishheilongjiang bayi agricultural universitydaqingchinaoct., 2011abstractthe movie shawshank redemption was issued in 1994

2、 in hollywood. its a story about a great banker andy with a promising future but was wrongly sentenced 20 years in prison and eventually escaped successfully. it was regarded as a tribute to all the inspirational films. this paper is to show some cultural characters of heroism and the culture of fai

3、th to further explore the film reflected the unique culture of the united states. it aims to show differences between cultural appreciations from the film, such as the purpose of watching a movie, and the differences about appreciating it.keywords shawshank redemption; heroism; religious culture摘 要电

4、影肖申克的救赎于1994年在好莱坞发行，讲述的是一个前途大好的银行家安迪含冤入狱20年之后成功越狱的故事，是一部人人称颂的励志好片。本文拟对影片中蕴含的美国文化元素进行解读，如英雄主义文化特征和信仰文化，旨在帮助我们更好地理解电影中所体现的美国特有的文化。并从文化欣赏的视角对国人和外国人对同一部影片的理解进行比较，找出差异。关键词 肖申克的救赎；英雄主义；宗教文化 introductionthe first time i knew this movie was in a class when one of my classmates offered to introduce us a grea

5、t movie. she said she just finished seeing this movie the other day. when she was telling the story, she was very excited. she said she had never seen a character that with such a strong mind and was so yearning for freedom. they can offer anything to trade for freedom, even though it may take them

6、a long time to make it. they were like birds which cannot be caged, because their feathers were too bright. at last, she strongly recommended it to us. at first, i didnt pay much attention to the movie because it is too long. but one year later, when i happened to ask one of my foreign teachers for

7、advice about writing on the newspaper, he invited me to attend his class of english listening and speaking and i was happy to join them to see a movie. it turned out that the movie they were studying was shawshank redemption. what a coincidence! as a result, i had a wonderful journey of seeing this

8、movie from a foreigners eyes. my foreign teacher is a british gentleman, who has taught english in china for 4 years. he knows china well; he knows what we think, so he can interpret this movie better for us. consequently, he showed us a different way to appreciate this famous movie, which from the

9、prospective of a european. from what i saw and what my teacher saw from a same film, i was very surprised by the huge differences about appreciations between us. if we bring it to the broad sense, we can easily come to the conclusion that there are many differences between cultural appreciations fro

10、m shawshank redemption. and i would like to show these differences to you in the following paper. a film is a two-sided mirror, through it, americans see the world, and we see the united states. before we come to talk about the differences between appreciations on the same film, i am going to show t

11、wo aspects of american culture reflected in the movie, which are individual heroism and redemption. one, cultural features of individual heroism in the film americans have a strong self-centered concept, they believe in individualism, and always put the pursuit of personal happiness and freedom on t

12、he core position, and strive to make it become a social common understanding. this unique value plays an important role in the history of social and individual development. films can directly reflect a nations culture, so american films also strongly promote self-centered individual heroism. the mov

13、ie shawshank redemption applies a gentle and slightly dark humor way to recopy the individual heroism of american dominant culture. andy was shaped into a mythical character, whose heart was full of hope. wrongly charged for the murder of his wife and his wifes lover, he was sent to the shawshank pr

14、ison. even so, in a 20-year depressive and brutal prison life, andy did not give in, but established his important position in the prison. with continuous efforts, andy spent 19 years digging a tunnel, which others thought would take 600 years to get through. undoubtedly, andy was a hero in this mov

15、ie; he not only saved his spirits, but saved other prisoners.two, redemptionreligious culture in the filmthe term redemption” originated in the old testament isaiah. obviously, it symbolizes christs practice of thinking and has very important significance. the film shawshank redemption is a story of

16、 salvation in the years of insufficiency of faith. the most impressive part in the movie is the interpretation of “redemption”. naturally, the redeemer is andy, in the 20-year prison career; and with his actions andy not only changed his own destiny, but also affected other prisoners.when it comes t

17、o the differences about appreciating a movie between english and a chinese, it can be shown in two ways.first, their appreciations about the story of a movie are different.take a chinese as an example, usually, we see a foreign movie just for fun. we go to a cinema to see a foreign movie often out o

18、f curiosity，and when we see a movie in a cinema, its already translated into our own language, at this point, its original beauty has decreased a lot. like i see the “shawshank redemption”, at the beginning, i didnt want to know further about it; all i wanted to know was its plot, and the destiny of

19、 every character in the movie. after i had finished watching it, i wouldnt give a second thought about the theme or the reasons why people made such a film. all i could remember was the rough story, and i even couldnt remember the names of the characters. however, my foreign teacher will have a diff

20、erent way of appreciating this movie. they are not only interested in its plot, they also pay attention to its theme, what the film tries to express or reflect. as a native speaker, they may have much the same understanding of the movie, and will have different inspirations about it.second, the appr

21、eciations on culture are different between native audience and foreign audience. when we see a foreign movie, we will focus more on the story than the cultural details. but native audience will be aware of the details which can distinct it from other movies from other countries. when i joined my tea

22、cher to see the “shawshank redemption”, he would make it pause sometimes, and told us the cultural backgrounds in the movie. when andy was first saw in the prison, many old prisoners called him “fish”, and they were fishing them on the packs of cigarettes. here “fish” doesnt mean a real fish in the

23、water, it represents those newcomers. the old prisoners fished them, which means they bet on them. without my teachers explanation, i wouldnt understand what a “fish” means in a prison. and a second scene i want to say is that, when you watch the movie, actors are saying english, so by which scene c

24、an you tell its an american movie, not a british one, or an australian one? well, from my teachers analysis, in the movie, when the prisoners were playing baseball on the playground. from this scene, we can easily know it is an american film.conclusionwhen the free and normal life has gone, our expectations about it will increase enormously, and we will try our