'Dancing With Handcuffs and Shackles': How Product Placement Is Adopted By the Chinese Film Industry.

Li, Wei (2015) 'Dancing With Handcuffs and Shackles': How Product Placement Is Adopted By the Chinese Film Industry. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Abstract
This PhD researches the role of product placement in modern Chinese
cinema, exploring the shifting discourses and textually-specific
practices that are unique to the practice of product placement within
the Chinese film industry.
Existing studies have focused almost exclusively on the Hollywood film
industry, and have analysed product placement in terms of its
effectiveness with audiences, and as a potential influence on consumer
behaviour, often from a psychological or marketing viewpoint. This
study approaches product placement from industrial and textual
perspectives, more interested in the process of product placement in
film production: how trade press reports, state and industry discourse,
and practitioner commentary, frames product placement within the
Chinese film experience. Therefore, this is a shift from work on the
consequences of product placement, or simplistic notions of good/bad
product placement, to an investigation of the discursive and textual
strategies used by the Chinese film industry when using product
placement in modern film production. This allows the thesis to focus on
how the Chinese industry offers an illusion of serving the public, able to
use its expertise to position product placement as what an assumed
audience wants. Examining different players in product placement
deals such as film producers, product placement agencies, brand
companies, and the Chinese government, also allows the study to
consider the shifting hierarchies of expertise and power. Within this,
the study identifies and analyses two specific power relationships: state
vs film industry, and creativity vs commercialisation.
Alongside industrial commentary, the study examines the textual status
of product placement through close mise-en-scène analysis of a range of
contemporary Chinese film examples. It identifies three elements –
2
narrative, character, and genre – as key areas where product placement
is most overtly displayed, visualised and embodied, and considers the
impact this has on narrative coherence.
Through this combination of discourse analysis and film analysis, the
study is able to critically investigate the role product placement plays
within the modern Chinese film industry.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies
Depositing User:	Users 7376 not found.
Date Deposited:	28 Jun 2016 13:44
Last Modified:	28 Jun 2016 13:44
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/59612
DOI:

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