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Author ORCID Identifier
N/A
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Communication
Year Degree Awarded
2015
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Briankle Chang
Second Advisor
Henry Geddes
Third Advisor
Enhua Zhang
Subject Categories
Communication
Abstract
The dissertation, through a semiotic reading of familial imagery in CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, explores the new propaganda and its effects on Chinese people's political subjectivity, against the background combining the dying Communist ideology, the rise of neoliberalism, the proliferating social technologies, and the tremendous human dislocation in contemporary China.
Particularly, informed by cultural studies and ethnographic methods, this research project explores how the post-collectivism party-state insists on a mirror image of the collectivism through constructing the country as a singular super "family" form the olden time, as exemplified in the televised spectacle - CCTV's Spring Festival Gala. In the meantime, the Gala also dramatizes the party-state's inability to form together a seamless and unproblematic unity, as shown by the close readings of the audience reception. In other words, although "family" enjoys a superior position in Chinese politics and society as it is rooted in commonly shared social values and in Chinese's everyday conceptual system, upholding the "many in one" idea which reflects the legacy of the previously-dominant ideological framework, actually invokes complex and uneasy relationship between the party-state and the ordinary Chinese people. The core of this research is to "return to the individual" as Havel suggests, to help people understand politics, as well as culture, in relation to themselves individually,
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/6557130.0
Recommended Citation
Shi, Lin, "The Ambiguous Construction of Collective "Family" in the Age of Post-collectivism China: Through the Lens of CCTV'S Spring Festival Gala" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 402.
https://doi.org/10.7275/6557130.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/402