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Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games

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Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Communication Dissertations Department of Communication Spring 5-5-2012 Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games James R. Schiffman Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_diss Recommended Citation Schiffman, James R., "Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2012. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_diss/31 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Communication at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games by James R. Schiffman Under the Direction of Michael L. Bruner ABSTRACT A critical comparison of the CCTV and NBC broadcasts of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics demonstrates how two sets of narratives that on the surface glorify China and the long Chinese cultural and historic tradition offer very different ideological projections about China's rise as a power and engagement with the wider capitalist world. For CCTV, China has finally righted a longstanding historical injustice and established itself as a co-equal nation among nations. For NBC, ambivalence about China is the watchword, and further reforms that by implication will help clear China of its non-democratic, totalitarian, and economically mercantilist sheen are needed if the country is to be fully embraced. The ideological construction is more hidden in the NBC broadcast, but both depend on massive erasures of history and blurring of contemporary issues, causing both sets of narratives to fail tests of narrative coherence. Discursive struggles over the authorship of the Opening Ceremony underlie both media texts and expose their ideological positioning. INDEX WORDS: China, Olympics, Mass media, Representation, NBC, CCTV, Orientalism, Occidentalism, Post-colonial, Ideological criticism, Ideological critique, Media spectacle Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games by James R. Schiffman A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2012 Copyright by James Robert Schiffman 2012 Mass Media and Representation: a Critical Comparison of the CCTV and NBC Presentations of the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games by James R. Schiffman Committee Chair: Michael L. Bruner Committee: Greg Lisby Leonard Teel Kathy Fuller-Seeley Fei-ling Wang Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2012 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the members of my immediate family: my daugher Jessica, my son Daniel, and most of all to my wife, best friend, and life partner Carolyn Schiffman. This work would never have been done without their loving support and kindness. iv Acknowledgements Many people helped and encouraged me along the way, but I want to express particular thanks to the small number of them who were instrumental in my work. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to the members of my committee and most of all to my adviser, Michael Bruner, whose generosity with his time, wise counsel, and skill as an editor are unsurpassed. Thank you to Greg Lisby, who helped guide me through comps, offering sound advice at all times. Thank you to Kathy Fuller-Seeley, who helped make this project deeper and better. Thank you to Leonard Teel, who encouraged me to seek a doctorate in the first place, and thank you to Fei-ling Wang for taking time out of a very busy schedule to serve on my committee. I also want to acknowledge the encouragement provided by the late Mark Alleyne, who helped get me started on this project. To Rena Golden, my former boss at CNN International, thank you for your immediate, enthusiastic, and unswerving support for my academic endeavors. To Meg MoritZ, thank you for having faith in me and allowing someone with no university- level teaching experience to design and teach a pilot course. To my friend Farooq Kperogi, my “unofficial adviser,” thank you for being there over the years. To my long-time friend Frank Green, thank you for your careful reading of draft material and your always incisive suggestions. And finally, I would be remiss if I did not again mention the love and support I have received over the last six years from my family. Thank you to Jessica and Daniel, and most of all to Carolyn, who ably transcribed the CCTV presentation into Chinese, found a credible online translation to cross-check her work against, and worked with me to translate it into English: you know this degree is at least half yours. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................................v Note on Transliteration .........................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 1 Theoretical Framework.......................................................................................................6 Method...............................................................................................................................24 Chapter Outline.................................................................................................................32 Chapter 2 Industrial, Historical, and Cultural Background............................................................46 CCTV in Context................................................................................................................48 NBC in Context..................................................................................................................61 Journalistic Context...........................................................................................................70 Historical Review...............................................................................................................89 Chapter 3 A Close Reading of the CCTV Presentation ................................................................. 129 Chapter 4 A Close Reading of the NBC Presentation..................................................................... 180 Chapter 5 A Critical Comparison of the CCTV And NBC Presentations.....................................223 Ideology in the Shadows..................................................................................................263 Impossible Unities............................................................................................................271 Discursive Struggles and Zhang Yimou.........................................................................278 Concluding Thoughts.......................................................................................................284 vi Note on Transliteration There are two main systems to romaniZe the Chinese language: Pinyin, which was developed in China, and Wade-Giles, which preceded it. I have used Pinyin in my text, but in some cases, authors I cite use Wade-Giles. Some confusion may arise from this combination. For example, I write about the Song Dynasty (Song being the Pinyin transliteration) while Sung appears in some titles (Sung being the Wade-Giles spelling). A similar situation arises with the Tang Dynasty (Pinyin) and T'ang Dynasty (Wade-Giles). Whatever the spelling, in these cases the renderings come from the same Chinese original. vii Chapter One: Introduction “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” --Rudyard Kipling1 “In the sky, there is no distinction of East and West; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.” --Prince Gautama Siddharta, a.k.a. the Buddha2 There is little question that mass media are central communicative forces in our age of globalization. The reach and potential impact of mass media are evident virtually everywhere one goes, even in a world of increasingly fragmented media channels and audiences. Twenty-four hour news channels beam their programming at international and regional audiences, with new networks in English and vernacular languages springing up in rapid succession. Movies from Hollywood and Bollywood are eagerly watched from the cineplex to the remotest corners of the globe. Latin American telenovelas have gained a worldwide following.3 American hip-hop music is popular in Japan, while K- pop has become a sensation in large parts of Asia.4 In all of these mediated genres, stories of nation, history, and culture are told. 1 Rudyard Kipling, Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1918),
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