从公益广告看中美文化差异【英文】 TJSS

The Current Cultural Differences between China and AmericaFrom Public-Interest AdvertisementsBy TJSS from Class 1001[Abstract] The article takes two groups of public-interest advertisement of the same theme as pointcut, sums differences in Chinese and American public-interest advertisements on four points, including leading direction, form of expression, performers, theme and scale. Then it analyses the corresponding cultural difference reflected from them and deeply research the root of these differences. Maybe people can be aware of performance of cultural difference between China and America in daily life via the article to promote cross-cultural communication. Besides, it may prompt self-examination of our Chinese current culture.[Key Words] Public Interest Advertisement , Current Cultural Difference, China and America[Introduction]Public-interest advertisement, just as the name implies, is a kind of advertisements used to form good social life order and basic public morality criterion, and serve for both public short-term and long-term benefit instead of making profits for individuals or companies. Public-interest advertisement can date from 1940s, when it first appeared in America, and then swept around the world. The first one in China is Please Save Water on Guiyang Television in 1986. Benefit of the community, the theme of reality and the call of performance are its three major characteristics. While in different country and culture, it may perform differently.[Background] In the now information age, media plays a role of more and more importance. Especially in recent years, investment in advertising even has grown exponentially. Among these advertisements, public-interest advertisement also gradually develops and reaches a much broader audience than any others by right of unique properties. With more and more public-interest advertisement works appearing in the world, the differences among countries and cultures are more and more significant. In fact, nearly all of these differences come from cultural differences—different culture atmosphere shapes different ideology and different belief, then different modes of thinking, which lead to different speech and behaviors. It’s no wonder, then, Chinese and American advertisements are in different styles. Then we’ll analyse these differences between China and America through two groups of public-interest advertisement of the same theme.[Views and Statements]Ⅰ.Differences in leading directionOne of American advertisements impressing me most is about logging ban.1The video ad has a distinct shot for the tree rings roughly divided into four parts on a stump. Three of them are annotated “Birth of Napoleon”“Birth of Van Gogh”“Birth of Einstein” in ①Abies beshanzuensis：百祖山冷杉order. Unexpectedly, the rings on the edge of the stump pointed out with a standing-out line: Birth of the mother fucker who cut down this tree. Gradually, the scenes turn to a tint of green, make more space for audience introspection.With the same theme of protecting trees and forbidding deforestation, there was an advertisement once broadcasted in CCTV Tenth Channel performed by LiAili. Li narrates the scene of her own drawing with her experience of witnessing plants dying out one after one during field painting. What appears at last is the subtitle “Please don’t let lives leave us”—a typical slogan in Chinese style. Compared to the focus on THE MOTHER FUCKER in American ad, the Chinese one vaguely leads to the direction of WE, thus we can see the obvious distinction.On cultural level, America pursues individualism, emphasizes independence ad. individuals, and believes that life is for everyone itself, so everyone should take responsibility for itself. American advertising, as a result, directs to everyone, to YOU INDIVIDUAL, but not to YOU GROUP or to WE. The strong pertinence, on one hand, alerts people to their own interest. On the other hand, it also sharply points out that responsibility is for everyone and can’t be shirked. On the contrary, collectivism is revered in Chinese culture. Chinese stress that collective interest is above personal interest. Furthermore, some of our traditional views, such as loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, integrity, remind people to undertake the due obligations for others, even for posterity. Therefore, propaganda in Chinese style, on the whole, leads to something like WE, ALL or HUMANITY. This tone indeed promotes cohesion to the heart to create a harmonious atmosphere. However, the sharing of burden weakens individual responsibility consciousness, also gives everyone chance to shirk, which results in the lack of motivation.Ⅱ.Differences in form of expressionObviously, forms of expressing of the two ads are in stark contrast, too. The Chinese one takes warm encouraging as overall tone, and ends up with warm warning—“Please don’t let lives leave us ”, though heartaches to endangered species represented by Abies beshanzuensis①are as well mentioned. Whereas, the American one, the scenes begin in peace in birdsong. The first three parts go on soft just like telling a history of giants，yet in the next breath, it turns to the stupid tree-cutter. The exposing and accusing in silence arouses strong indignation. Positive praising and encouraging with slogan in Chinese ads and Negative accusing and rejecting with silence in American ads is precisely according with basic ideas for public-interest advertisements in two countries.Several years ago, CCTV First Channel broadcasted a public-interest advertisement about “Washing Feet for Mom” that touched many hearts. It tells a story about a little boy blunders to fetch a basin of water to wash feet and tell stories for his mom after seeing mom washes feet for his grandma with tiredness of the day, then conveys gist about caring for the olds. The American one about “Future of Children”, by contrast, is much more abstract. Smoking, littering, abusing each other on the car, criticizing with anger, complaining, domestic violence, and so on, all these parents’ bad manners are imitated by children nearby. The comparison between the elder and the younger alarms all parents that what you are doing now is what your children will do after several years!This set of public-interest ads about children’s education are much more different in methods of expression than the former set. The Chinese story type emotionalizes audience,appeals for caring for the olds via praising mom’s filial piety as well as children’s filial piety, and alert parents to the importance of their own demonstration effect in daily life. When the chubby boy holds chest-high basin, staggers, struggles to open eyes with splash around him, and says “Mom, washing feet!”, who can be not touched or resonated? Yet the American example type convinces people. The scenes which seems noisy, is a silent warning actually. When listening to bestial words and seeing the rude or violent behaviors not consonance with their puerile faces, who can be not surprised or do not self-examined?Of course, form of expression is closely linked to political environment and organizer, while in my opinion, the most important point is difference in modes of thinking between America and Chinese. Chinese are more conservative and traditional. The ancient views of valuing literature over business drove development of literature and enriched cultural deposits. Meanwhile, relatively perceptual thinking pattern forms, which leads to paying more attention to communication in emotion. However, things in America are different. America’s foundation is late, moreover, British colonial rule brought Science and technology concept to America. After a long term of influence with these scientific views, Americans are used to rational thinking pattern. Besides, free concepts from individualism and relatively easier political and educational environment develop their creative thinking. That’s maybe just the reason why Chinese products, especially cultural and technological works are similar, while American ones are usually original.On the verbal section, American ads are also more open than Chinese ones.Bad words may often appear in American media in their free environment. In China, there are no bad words in media. The main reason may be the Hall Sense. That is also the result of valuing literature over business, which determines literati’s high social status. It’s no wonder that what literati praised—grace, is also promoted to a high position. Then, all indelicate things or manners are strictly prohibited, particularly when in public. Once appearing, the audience around would feel embarrassed and ashamed. In a neat twist, Americans just regard them as a part of life.Ⅲ.Differences in performersAs for performers, salient differences exist between public-interest ads of two countries. Celebrity endorsements are often used in Chinese ads to attract attention by Star Effect to improve publicity.In America, things are different. Amateur performers and animation participate in ads most. Pursuit to originality and overall effect is their emphasis. The former two groups are good examples.LiAili, a plant painter, a hockey player, even an athlete of Chinese women hockey team taking part in the World Cup in 2002 and won the championship, holds the two completely unrelated posts simultaneously. Ad shot by such a legendary woman, without doubt, draws much attention, let alone ads with celebrity endorsement.For the two American ads, the former one takes form of cartoon, and the latter one choose lots of amateur performers. Just like masterminds of these two, American masterminds usually lay their stress on content and overall effect to attract audience.In fact, i t’s a reflection of difference in visual angles and concepts when perceiving others between China and America to some degree. Americans pursue individualism with the view of all men are created equally. They believe that everyone has a unique contribution to society and a unique survival value in life. They have their own belief, but no blind worships.But Chinese are different. The history of authoritarian feudalism lasted for such a long term that it marked Chinese nation with cohesion to an individual. And this idea comes down from ancient times. In many people’s opinion, we are living in a socialist society, in a republic, thus the personality cult doesn’t exist anymore. While, it may just turn to a different stratum, for example, film star. When exotic items flood into our country, many people can’t resist such temptation and personality cult to these new items grows rapidly. That’s precisely the cause of Star Effect.Ⅳ.Differences in theme and scaleWhen searching and scanning these advertisements, I found that the themes of the American public-interest ads are extremely large, involving a wide range. Besides, the advertisement content and form is multifarious; each has its strong point. Furthermore, the ads in America, which play persistently strong, even change monthly and focus on different things in a year. With comparison, our domestic ads seem a little bit plain. Although there are amount of creative public-interest ads in China, the quantity is very small, plus not continuously broadcast. What is worse, the majority are essentially short of new ideas, with narrow themes limited to caring for parents, protecting animals, paying attention to AIDS, and so on, generally presenting gathering patterns. Broadcasting doesn’t take shape. As we know, public-interest ads, without persistence and planning, only depend on frequent broadcasting when multiple social problems appear together still falls far short of the needs. It can’t be denied that political factors limit the development of public-interest in China to some extent. On the one hand, it mirrors different political environment in two countries. As mentioned before, China was ruled by feudalism for a long time. During the dictatorship, almost all aspects were determined by the dictator, including culture. Dictators controlled culture via public opinion atmosphere and controlled public opinion atmosphere via education. Therefore, guidance of public opinion usually tends to harmony. And this view influenced their offspring—us. The traditional views exclude different sounds. On the other hand, it directly reflects difference in the ways of thinking between America and China. In the battle thinking set against sense of innovation, the fatter wins evidently.Let’s look at it from a different angle, differences in attitudes to work, or some other things are expressed. Americans prefer to take an active part rather than passively participate as Chinese. The difference is much more obvious in working. American awareness of equality contributes to choosing jobs they are interested in ignoring social status and salary, so they fall in love with it easily. They enjoy developing automatically, enjoy stepping outside the box and creating something agree with their own ideas. For Chinese, with strong grade awareness and face-saving awareness, we are easily affected by materials or public opinions. Then we often focus on social status or salary instead of interest, which is the direct cause of little enthusiastic. Regarding work as task or only a replay to the superior perhaps is reason for lacking creativity.[Conclusion]In conclusion, Chinese public-interest advertisements lay stress on people, attract audience by celebrity endorsements and emotion communication and aim at whole society. On the contrary, those in America lay stress on matters, draw audience’s eyes through current affairs or scenes of social problems and aim at every individual. The correspondingcultural difference is the collectivism, emphasis on harmonious atmosphere and relevance between persons, strong grade awareness, blind personality cult, conservative and perceptual views in China and individualism, stress on everyone’s independence and equality of all men, free, creative and rational ideas in America.In reality, any culture must contain both essence and dreg through eyes of the contemporary era. Taking complex internal relationship among elements of culture as consideration, we can’t deny any kinds of ideas because the consequences are so serious that we can’t imagine, much less shouldering the responsibility. What’s more, every culture has the right to survive, and just as we can’t decide others’ life, we have no power to deny culture’s surviving. Not only do these differences bring contradictions, but also bring authenticity and vitality, which make communication all over the world significant. Culture of each nation can be made necessary changes in different period and social environment, which doesn’t affect co-existence of different culture at all! In other words, common development is the direction for culture.[Reference Works][1]Public-Interest Advertisement Video: “Stop Deforestation”“Future of Children”《不要让生命远去》《将爱心传递下去》[2]高艳艳《中美公益广告之比较》（2010.5）[3]金海鑫《中国公益广告的现状及未来发展》（2010.5）[4]丫丫论文《文化视角中的中西方公益广告对比分析》（2011.1）。