In Signifying the Local, Jin Liu examines contemporary cultural productions rendered in local languages and dialects ( fangyan) in the fields of television, cinema, music, and literature in Mainland China. This ground-breaking interdisciplinary research provides an account of the ways in which local-language media have become a platform for the articulation of multivocal, complex, and marginal identities in post-socialist China. Viewed from the uniquely revealing perspective of local languages, the mediascape of China is no longer reducible to a unified, homogeneous, and coherent national culture, and thus renders any monolithic account of the Chinese language, Chineseness, and China impossible.
Author(s): Jin Liu
Series: China Studies 25
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: x+316
Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China in the New Millennium
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 A Historical Review of the Discourse of the Local in Twentieth-Century China
Introduction
Late Qing: Lao Naixuan’s Simplified Script and Zhang Taiyan’s New Dialect
Advocating Dialect and Dialect Literature during the May Fourth Period
The Ambiguous Attitude towards Dialect in the Mass Language
Discussion and the Latinxua New Writing Movement
The Transcendence of the Local and the Reform of Dialect during and
after the “National Forms” Debate
2 An Overview of Television Series Productions in the 2000s
Beijing
Shanghai
Chongqing and Chengdu
Guangzhou
Conclusion
3 Alternative Translation: Performativity in Dubbing Films in Local Languages
Introduction
Dubbing as an Alternative Translation
Local-Language Dubbing as a Reaction to the Putonghua Dubbing Tradition
Laughter and Local Community
Power Reversals in Local-Language Versions of Tom and Jerry
The Issue of Child Audiences
Conclusion
4 Empowering Local Community: TV News Talk Shows in Local Languages
Aliutou Talks News and the News Entertainmentization
News Talks Shows and the Traditional Performing Arts
News Talk Shows and Local Community Building
The Emergence of the Lanmuju Genre and News Dramatization
5 Ambivalent Laughter: Comic Sketches in CCTV’s Spring Festival Eve Gala
Bakhtin’s Theory of Folk Humor
Evolution of Xiaopin in CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala
Zhao Benshan’s Comic Sketches and Northeast Errenzhuan
6 Popular Music and Local Youth Identity in the Age of the Internet
Xue Cun’s Breakthrough and the Wave of Internet Songs in Local Languages
An Alternative Cultural Space
The Use of Local Languages in Rock Music in the Late 1990s
Locality, Youth Identity, and the Internet
A Case Study of Shanghai Rap and the SHN Website
7 The Rhetoric of Local Languages as the Marginal: Chinese Underground and Independent Films by Jia Zhangke and Others
Jia’s Documentary Filmmaking Style
Private Space versus Public Space in Xiao Wu
The Tension between Diegesis and Mimesis in Platform
Gendered Language Use in Unknown Pleasures
Intellectuals’ Representation of the Subaltern in Underground Films in Local Languages
8 Multiplicity in Mainstream Studio Films in Local Languages
Subjectivity in the Use of Language and Voice in Missing Gun
The Language of the “Little Characters”
Grotesque Realism in Crazy Stone and the New Development of the Comedy Genre
9 The Unassimilated Voice in Recent Fiction in Local Languages
Rural Local Languages in Nativist Fiction
Local Languages in Zhiqing Fiction and Their Film Adaptations
Conclusion
Film, Video, and Audio Sources
Bibliography
Index
