The Cultural Politics of Affect and Emotion: A Case Study of Chinese Reality TV

by Wei Dong

Overview

Against the background of the media commercialization reform since the 1990s in China and drawing on the case of »X-Change« (2006-2019), Wei Dong investigates the affective meaning-making mechanism in the multimodal text of Chinese reality TV. The focus lies on the ways in which emotions are appropriated and disciplined by regimes of power and identity, and the ways in which affect - in this case primarily kuqing (bitter emotions) communicated by the material and the body - have the potential to challenge or exceed existing relations of power in the mediascape. Wei Dong shows how Chinese reality TV provides a historical and theoretical opportunity for understanding the affective structures of contemporary China in the dynamic process of fracture and integration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783732862849
Publisher:	transcript Verlag
Publication date:	08/31/2022
Series:	Critical Studies in Media and Communication , #28
Sold by:	Libreka GmbH
Format:	eBook
Pages:	234
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Wei Dong, born in 1991, studies affect theories and Chinese media culture. She completed her doctorate at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Acknowledgements 9
List of Abbreviations 11
List of Tables and Figures 13
Chapter 1: Introduction 15
Chapter 2: Mass Media and Reality TV Formats in Post-socialist China 25
Chapter 3: The Turn to Affect and its Application to Reality TV 43
Chapter 4: Reality TV Analysis: From Authenticity to Affect 75
Chapter 5: Researching Affect in Reality TV Text 97
Chapter 6: Telling Stories, Swapping Lives 113
Chapter 7: Emotional Excess and Therapeutic Governance 131
Chapter 8: The Politics of Suffering and Kuqing 153
Chapter 9: Conclusion and Discussion 185
Bibliography 197