Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China
Mainstream Culture Refocused: Television Drama, Society, and the Production of Meaning in Reform-Era China
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Abstract
Serialized television drama dianshiju, perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. This book draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of storytelling. This book argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect “refocusing” mainstream Chinese culture. The book opens with an examination of television as a narrative motif in three contemporary Chinese art-house films. It then turns attention to dianshiju’s most important subgenres. “Emperor dramas” highlight the link between popular culture’s obsession with emperors and modern Chinese intellectuals’ preoccupation with issues of history and tradition and how they relate to modernity. In an exploration of the “anti-corruption” subgenre, the book considers three representative dramas, exploring their diverse plots and emphases. “Youth dramas’” rich array of representations reveal the numerous social, economic, cultural, and ideological issues surrounding the notion of youth and its changing meanings. The chapter on “family-marriage” analyzes the ways in which women’s emotions are represented in relation to their desire for “happiness.” Song lyrics from music composed for television dramas are considered as “popular poetics.” The Epilogue returns to the relationship between intellectuals and the production of mainstream cultural meaning in the context of China’s post-revolutionary social, economic, and cultural transformation.
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