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Reconstructing Safety: The Captain (2019) and the Politics of Disaster in China’s New Era

  • Journal of Chinese Language and Literature
  • 2025, (100), pp.315~338
  • DOI : 10.15792/clsyn..100.202512.315
  • Publisher : Chinese Literary Society Of Yeong Nam
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Received : November 20, 2025
  • Accepted : December 13, 2025
  • Published : December 30, 2025

Lee Boram 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examines The Captain(2019) and asks how the 2018 Sichuan Airlines Flight 3U8633 incident is reconstructed as a paradigmatic case through which “safety” becomes a public value and a basis for institutional trust in China’s New Era. Early media accounts framed the event as a miracle or an instance of individual heroism. State discourse, however, rapidly redefined it as evidence of institutional capacity grounded in procedures, standardized training, and professional responsibility. This reframing was consolidated by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, which formalized the “Three Reverences(三個敬畏)”—reverence for life, regulations, and duty—as core principles of civil aviation safety. The film translates this interpretive shift into an embodied viewing experience through procedural sequencing, cross-cutting between cockpit, cabin, and air-traffic control, and sustained attention to routine expertise under pressure. The analysis proceeds in three parts. First, it shows how the film constructs disaster not as a sudden rupture but as a risk that is anticipated, classified, and made structurally intelligible through institutional information flows. Second, it argues that safety is represented as an outcome of procedural continuity: manual-based actions, distributed coordination, and professional discipline accumulate into stability. Third, it situates this aesthetic and narrative design within the heightened political emphasis on safety in 2019, when “risk prevention” and “stability maintenance” were foregrounded as governance priorities. Ultimately, The Captain reframes the 3U8633 incident less as an emotional tale of extraordinary courage than as proof that a system can hold under real pressure. By foregrounding subjects who embody consistency in procedure, regulation, and duty, the film offers a model of professionalism aligned with the state’s call for public trust in institutional order. This study argues that the “politics of safety” provides a productive lens for understanding contemporary state–society relations in Chinese disaster cinema and opens broader questions about the cultural politics of security in the New Era.

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