China’s Official Values Propaganda in New Mainstream Films: A Systematic Literature Review and Theoretical Analysis

Abstract

Chinese new mainstream films are responsible for propagating China’s official values to spectators. This study aimed to provide a critical and well-rounded understanding of the propagation of new mainstream films and the authorities’ values for the filmic, cultural, and other relevant academic communities. A systematic literature review was conducted according to the PRISMA statement. Studies were identified from two databases—Web of Science and Scopus—and integrated into a double-sided snowball sampling procedure as seeds to identify other relevant resources. Codes and themes were generated using ATLAS.ti for data extraction and synthesis. The narratives of certain new mainstream films contradicted China’s official political position and national interests. This study examined the narrative mechanism used to interpret this issue from a theoretical perspective and revealed three themes that were discussed in the context of China’s political discourse: patriotism, harmony, and prosperity. A filmic narrative mechanism model based on Gaudreault and Jost’s work (1999 [2004]) was refined. Moreover, the cognitive gap in and between the mega-narrator and supreme narrator resulted in expressions that were incompatible with China’s official position. This research contributes significantly to the study of Chinese new mainstream films.