Two gaps exist in the academic history of the Chinese School of Animation: the Cultural Revolution period (1966–1976) and the 1990s. These two gaps are characterized by relevant studies stagnating in these periods and later researchers doing little to explore them. The gap of the Cultural Revolution period was mainly formed by the national mandatory force. By contrast, the 1990s gap was primarily caused by Chinese intellectuals’ voluntary forgetting in the particular social context. The two gaps are the outcome of historical construction, and meanwhile, they generate memories about themselves. Later Chinese researchers tend to construct the historical continuity across the gaps, which enhances the future orientation of the memory of the Chinese School of Animation’s past. The major strategies of constructing the historical continuity include the homogenized narrative based on aesthetic identity and the re-interpretation based on the nationality.
Huang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.