ABSTRACT

American and English TV series and films are now spreading very quickly and widely all over the world. While watching these TV series and movies, we can easily find many “Easterners”. However, what makes us disappointed and angry is that most of those eastern images have been distorted even maliciously vilified.  

Through analysis of the corpus composed of American and English TV series and movies, this paper first classifies the images of the “Easterner” in the contemporary American and British TV series and movies into seven types and analyzes them from three aspects: appearance, conversation and behavior of the “Eastern” images, aiming to find out how those images are constructed. Then, this thesis analyzes possible reasons for the distortion of the Easterners in American TV series from political, cultural, economic and historical perspectives, and points out possible aftermath of these distortions. Finally, this paper proposes several ways to cope with the distortion of the Oriental in American and English TV series and movies.

Key words：Western TV series ;Movies; Easterner; images; distortion

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One  INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two  LITERATURE REVIEW-3

  2.1 Review of Eastern people Images in Western culture-3

  2.2 Studies on the images of the Eastern people-4

Chapter Three  RESEARCH DESIGN-5

  3.1 Research Objective and Questions-5

  3.2 Data collection and Processing-5

Chapter Four  REASERCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-5

  4.1 Major Types of Images of “Eastern People” in Contemporary American TV Series-5

    4.1.1 The Unmoral and Evil Eastern People-5

    4.1.2 The Eastern People Belonging to Lower Class-7

    4.1.3 The Oppressed Eastern People-7

    4.1.4 The Ingratitude Eastern People-8

    4.1.5 The Superstitious Eastern People-9

    4.1.6 The needy Eastern People-10

  4.2 Explanation for Distorted Images of the Chinese in Contemporary American TV series-11

    4.2.1 Political Reason-11

    4.2..2 Cultural Reason-12

    4.2.3 Historical Reason-13

Chapter Five  CONCLUSION-15

  5.1 Conclusion-15

  5.2 Implication-16

  5.3 Limitation-17

  5.4 Future research-18

Reference-19