View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by WestminsterResearch WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/westminsterresearch Beyond totalitarian nostalgia: a critical urban reception study of historical drama on contemporary Chinese television Dawei Guo School of Media, Arts and Design This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2012. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: (http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e- mail [email protected] BEYOND TOTALITARIAN NOSTALGIA: A Critical Urban Reception Study of Historical Drama on Contemporary Chinese Television DAWEI GUO A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2012 ABSTRACT From the mid-1990s a wave of dramatic serials featuring the legendary figures of China‘s bygone dynasties has emerged in dramatic programming on Chinese primetime television. The commercialization of mass media and the rise of media consumerism in China since the early 1990s have fostered the emergence of these historical dramas on television. Set during the dynasty era, these television historical dramas have been at the forefront in articulating political and legal principles based on the Confucian-influenced traditional Chinese culture. Although media scholars have interpreted the popularity of the television historical dramas as a revival of Confucianism, virtually no empirical research has been done to explore how Chinese audiences relate their viewing experiences to the revival of Confucianism according to their own social and cultural conditions. This thesis presents a qualitative audience study of how the historical dramas are understood and socially and culturally valued in contemporary China, taking into account personal, social, historical and cultural issues that relate to viewers‘ engagement with this television genre. Between late September 2007 and early April 2008, the author carried out his fieldwork audience research in two urban settings in China, the city of Beijing and that of Changsha. 10 focus groups and 11 in-depth interviews were conducted involving more than 60 respondents from young adult and middle-aged audience groups. According to the author‘s fieldwork data analysis, the ways that the Chinese audience engages with the historical drama are far more complex than generally thought; rather than insist on a literal interpretation of the drama text, the audience engages with the historical television drama in quite a divergent way due to his or her age, gender, life stage and socio-cultural status. Meanwhile, informed by the Grounded Theory, the author identified two text-based interpretive frameworks that are adopted by the respondents across all the focus groups and in-depth interviews in their understanding and evaluation of the historical drama text. These two interpretive frameworks include the framework of fact/fiction and that of ‗classic-ness‘. To conclude, the author argues that the Chinese audience‘s response to the historical drama goes beyond a literal, political sense of totalitarian nostalgia; it is characterised by an increasingly more liberal, diverse and indeed open-ended engagement with the historical drama text. Nevertheless, a critical re-evaluation of Maoist revolutionary classic literary works is manifested within that engagement process. 1 CONTENTS Abstract 1 List of tables and figures 5 Acknowledgements 6 Author’s declaration 8 Chapter 1 Introduction 9 1.1 The background context of the research 9 1.2 The aims of the research and its proposed contribution to knowledge 13 1.3 Thesis outline 15 Chapter 2 Theoretical Framework and the Rationale of the Research 20 2.1 Introduction 20 2.2 Theoretical approaches to the analysis of contemporary Chinese television 21 2.3 Genre issues concerning contemporary Chinese television historical drama 25 2.4 Changing paradigms in critical Chinese television reception studies 31 2.4.1 James Lull‘s China Turned On and British Cultural Studies in the 1980‘s 34 2.4.2 A revised cultural approach and Anthony Fung and Eric Ma‘s Satellite modernity 38 2.4.3 The theories of cultural citizenship and Anthony Fung‘s fandom and youth studies 43 2.5 Concluding remarks: towards the relationship between the historical and the post-socialist Chinese audience-hood 48 Chapter 3 The Rise of ‘New Historical Drama’ on Contemporary Chinese Television 50 3.1 Introduction 50 3.2 The governmental-ideological sphere: the rise of traditional culture ‗fever‘ 51 3.3 The literary sphere: the emergence of new historical novel 56 3.4 The television media sphere: anti-corruption television drama and new historical drama 61 3.5 Summary 68 Chapter 4 Methodology and Methods 70 4.1 Introduction 70 4.2 Research methodology 70 4.3 The use of the research methods 72 2 4.3.1 Cultural genre analysis 72 4.3.2 Focus group 74 4.3.3 In-depth interviews 78 4.4 Data analysis 79 4.5 Summary 83 Chapter 5 Contemporary Chinese Historical Television Drama as a Cultural Genre 85 5.1 Introduction 85 5.2 A brief introduction to three historical dramas 87 5.3 Television industry 94 5.4 Television scholars 100 5.5 Concluding remarks 109 Chapter 6 Engaging with History 112 6.1 Introduction 112 6.2 Historical accuracy and the public attitudes 113 6.3 The myth of totalitarian nostalgia 119 6.4 Historical resources and contemporary use 124 6.4.1 Learning 125 6.4.2 Reflection 127 6.4.3 Suspicion 130 6.5 Concluding remarks 131 Chapter 7 Fact/Fiction 133 7.1 Introduction 133 7.2 Genre definition 136 7.3 Chinese historiographical tradition and its three types of television interpreters 143 7.3.1 Conservatists 146 7.3.2 Culturalists 148 7.3.3 Realists 150 7.4 Concluding remarks 152 Chapter 8 Classic 154 8.1 Introduction 154 8.2 The classic television drama: a reappraisal 157 8.3 The new ‗classic‘ discourse and the audience‘s reflexive attitudes 167 8.3.1 The middle-aged adults 168 3 8.3.2 The young adults 171 8.4 Concluding remarks 176 Chapter 9 Conclusion 178 9.1 Introduction 178 9.2 Political and cultural forces at work in the production of historical dramas 179 9.3 The historical drama and its audiences: articulating and disarticulating state power 182 9.4 Towards Chinese television culture beyond totalitarian nostalgia and future research directions 185 References 189 Appendix One: List of focus group and in-depth interview participants 202 Appendix Two: Glossary of Chinese characters 204 4 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1 The detailed focus group features Table 2 The detailed in-depth interview features Figure1 DVD cover for The Bronze Teeth (2000) Figure 2 DVD cover for The Great Emperor Hanwu (2005) Figure 3 DVD cover for The First Emperor (2006) 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There is a long list of people and institutions that I wish to thank for helping me to finish this long academic training. Unfortunately, I can only mention the most prominent few of them here to keep this acknowledgement to a reasonable length. Firstly, my Director of Studies Professor Jeanette Steemers deserves a big hug from me. I know that I have been such a headache in her working life since she became my DoS in September 2010. Thanks to her great sense of responsibility and excellent supervisory skills, I managed to overcome terrible writing hurdle and regain self-confidence in continuing with this project. Without her unstinting support and care I could not have had come this far. Being an amazing example herself, she has taught me that an educator should never easily give up on any student. Special thanks also go to my previous Director of Studies Professor Annette Hill and my second supervisor Dr. Roza Tsagarousianou. It is a great pity that I could not go on working with Annette as she had to leave for a new post in the University of Lund, Sweden. Annette provided me with invaluable help in determining the scope of this project as well as conducting my fieldwork research. She had had acted so well as, in her own words, ‗a vigor booster‘ at the early stage of my research. Roza has been hugely supportive and encouraging for me since the beginning of my doctoral studies. Her wonderful comments on my Transfer documents reassured me that my attempt of using Durkheimian ideas was worthwhile. Besides my supervisory team, there are some other faculty members from the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) here at University of Westminster to whom I owe many thanks. I thank the CAMRI for offering me a three-year China Media Centre Fee Waiver Scholarship. Professor Hugo de Burgh, the Director of the China Media Centre (CMC), has been always ready to help me with my thesis. I had also had great honor to work for the CMC in organizing a seminar series between May 2008 and July 2009 and its annual Chinese media conference in July 2009. Professor Colin Sparks, Dr.