THE FERGUSON CENTRE FOR
AFRICAN AND ASIAN STUDIES
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THE FERGUSON CENTRE FOR |
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Roehampton Conference Abstracts 10. Yue Daiyun (Peking University, China): Yue Daiyun is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature, Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies and President of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association. She has held many visiting positions in the US, Australia and Canada, and has received numerous awards and honours, including an Honorary Doctor of Letters from McMaster University, Canada. Her many books include, La licorne et le dragon -- les malentendus dans la recherché de l’universel (2003, with Le Pichon, French), A Bridge Across Cultures (2002, Chinese), Theory of Comparative Literature (1988, Chinese), Intellectuals in Chinese Fiction (1987, English). She is also a GIPSC Project coordinator. Since Deng Xiaoping’s south-visit in 1992 the commercial trend has spread all over China. Various new forms of popular culture or cultures of consumption have appeared, paving the way for a cultural market full of energy. This is manifest in advertisements, luxurious fashion magazines, hundreds of weekend leisure newspapers, travel agencies, karaoke clubs, family cinemas, outlets for brand-named commodities and fashion clothes, quick-food chains such as Macdonald’s or Pizza Hut. China can now be regarded as experiencing the post-industrial phenomena, culture, values and ideology that emerged from and in the west. Financial flows are being generated by exploiting a huge popular cultural market which can apparently be endlessly replicated and “localized”. Popular culture needs neither the “permission” of the authority nor the “guidance” of intellectuals. The cultural market repeats itself endlessly and covers the whole country. Commercialization and marketization are important components of reform and opening to the outside. Popular culture has become not only the composer but also the carrier of the ideology of everyday life. As Herbert Marcuse observed, popular culture is an important means to implementing social control and moulding society from top to bottom. China’s popular culture since the 1990s has become deeply rooted in the social life, and is the main force in the construction of ideology today. Several consequences follow from this. Firstly, society is divided into new levels by a new principle. The conventional division of workers, peasants, and intellectuals no longer accords with the reality. Now the most prominent class is that of the “new wealthy people”, i.e. the “successful people”. They are the apples in the eyes of today’s society, and consumer demand is determined according to their tastes. The second class is that of the “white collars” or office workers. They are regarded as the new partakers of large-scale consumption. The third class consists of labourers without high technical skills. Most of them come from rural areas, without getting registered for permanent residence in the cities. Their number is big, in Shanghai alone their number has passed two millions. They are not well educated, cheap videos and movies take up much of their leisure time, and they are the major readers of popular romantic stories and low-priced popular journals. Their cultural tastes derive largely from the best sellers, movies, teleplays and popular songs that they consume. Lastly, there are those who have been laid off, retired, and the ready-to-work, i.e. the officers, workers, and old people who live on slender salaries. In these circumstances, the desires and dreams of enjoying the present that have been aroused by the “successful people” have gradually replaced the increasingly remote ideals of “common wealth” and the “communist society”. Secondly, there have been great changes in time and space in our lives; indeed, according to Anthony Giddens, globalization consists primarily of such changes rather than in the increase of economic interdependence. Consumption is not merely passive acceptance for pure material satisfaction, but also an active process of spiritual formation. Obviously, the advertisements we encounter everyday do not only present the merchandise but also construct people’s imagination. The things that they advocate have little to do with most people, but they nevertheless excite people’s desires and imagination. Fashion magazines not only teach the “new wealthy people” how to dress themselves and standardize their living format, but also create a desire in the public to follow this trend, no matter how distant the realisation of such desires might be. Commodities are no longer for the needs of life but a code of desire -- the desire to be “new wealthy people”. At the same time, a new ideology is formed. As Herbert Marcuse pointed out, it is illusory and mundane ideas infused and manipulated by brand-names that make the public “one-dimensional men.” Thirdly, when the alien culture joins the local culture, a procession
of appropriation and transformation inevitably occurs. Take the ”father
of Chinese Rock and Roll”-- Cui Jian -- as an example. His performance
is mainly borrowed from American Pop, but most of his irony and joking
is addressed to the Chinese reality with a bold, rejecting attitude which
was unknown before. He combined subversive political satire with a narcissistic
youth-taste skilfully. The birth of Chinese Rock and Roll represented
by Cui Jian is characteristically Chinese and belongs to the contemporary
time, more so than originating in western music.
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