From Blood Ties to Affective Contracts: The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Conceptions of Family in Chinese Animated Films of the New Century
Based on Confucian ethics, traditional Chinese animated movies presented the family through the kinship of the patriarch and the connection between family and the state, stressing the inheritance of bloodline, the authority of the father, and social responsibility. Since the start of the 21st century, urbanization, population change, and the pluralization of values have disrupted this structure. Present-day films reduce the importance of blood relations, vary the forms of family, doubt the domestic hierarchy, and show the family as both a place of trauma and a means of recovery. By carefully studying some typical works such as the White Snake trilogy, the Ne Zha series, The Legend of Hei and Deep Sea, this paper suggests that Chinese animation rebuilds the family based on an “emotional contract”: an ethical system maintained by choice, sympathy, mutual caring and emotional work. This change is not merely denying the inherited kinship, but re-interpreting the family as a dynamic community of belonging. Therefore, animation offers a significant means by which the contemporary changes in Chinese family ethics can be observed and discussed publicly.
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