On the Difference between British and American National Characters Revealed in Garfield II

Abstract

With the deepening of the reform and open-up policy in every field of China, field of movie has been facing the impacts from western culture. The 21 Century Fox, which has the most continuous influence in business, produced a Garfield sequel in 2006. It takes people to enjoy the beauty of England and met a new royal cat Prince VII who looks the same like Garfield. As a result, they live a complete different life by mistake. This is the plot that the thesis based on and used to indicate the different culture between England and American, especially in terms of national character.

Instead of adopting professional ways of film appreciating technique, this thesis is just based on the plot of the film and show the theme by various ways of literature appreciating. Firstly, it gives a brief introduction of the importance on research of national character, which, in this thesis, employs the new view of movie appreciating. Then it introduces some questions, methods as well as the plot of the film; Secondly, argument on national character will be indicated and the relation between animated film and national character will be discussed. Then the author sums up the main national characters of both peoples by analysis of national history and feature. Thirdly, the author employs examples and illustrations to point out the theme of the thesis in view of literature appreciating of movie and impresses readers with the deep meaning of watching a movie. At last,the author declare meaning and limitation of the thesis as a conclusion.

The result of this thesis will be a suggestion that English scholars should focus more on the plot and the figures to show the culture dimension to readers, which is more meaningful for audience than professional film appreciating skills like sound, picture etc.

Key words: national character, culture patterns, culture diversity, literary appreciation