The Two Faces of Confucianism: Narrative Construction of Cross-Cultural Images in Television Documentaries

This paper has two aims. First, it attempts to delineate the broad features of the representation of Confucianism in British television documentaries. Second, it seeks to address the question of how representation is created in and by the mass media. Both issues are explored through an examination of the narrative structures and discursive formations of documentary texts, contextualized by the process of documentary making and Sino-Western relations. The conclusion is that at a textual level, conflicting images of Chinese traditional culture result largely from different understandings of this culture by documentary makers, while at a global level images are primarily determined by the general climate of Sino-Western relations.