Reimagining TV China in the Post-2020 Years through a Queer/ing Lens

Participant(s)

Activity date	15 May 2023
Degree of recognition	International

Description

Abstract:
The 2010s have seen an explosion in popularity of Chinese television featuring same-sex intimacies, LGBTQ-identified celebrities, and explicitly homoerotic storylines even as state regulations on “vulgar” and “immoral” content grow more prominent. Taking “queer” as a verb, an adjective, and a noun, the speaker proposes an analytical framework of “queer/ing TV China” to explore the power of various TV genres and narratives, censorial practices, and fandoms in queer desire-voicing and subject formation within a largely heteropatriarchal society. This talk situates the studies of post-2020 TV China within the sociopolitical contexts and transformations that have contributed to the rise of nonnormative representations on Chinese TV in the twenty-first century. The speaker identifies and challenges the widespread “repressive hypothesis” rooted in existing queer Chinese TV studies. Drawing on a number of recent cases, she highlights the importance of unsettling the dichotomous, categorical logics often employed to understand meanings associated with various TV genres and formats and televisual imaginings of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity/race, nationality, and age.

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