Ideology and the performance of Chineseness
Hong Kong singers on the CCTV stage
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v12i2.107Keywords:
Hong Kong, identity, People’s Republic of China, popular music, televisionAbstract
This article examines the construction of Chinese nationalism through song performances on China’s national network, China Central Television (CCTV), with a particular focus on the accommodation of Hong Kong singers. It contributes to the body of knowledge on televised musical performances in Asia, a subject on which there is limited research. I examine two performances by Hong Kong singers on CCTV’s travelling programme The Same Song in 2007, the year China celebrated ten years since the end of British sovereignty over Hong Kong. I argue that singers who are identified as hailing from Hong Kong perform different but overlapping ideological roles for Party-state television. They appear to offer audiences a sense of freshness and modernity, and therefore help the Party-state project an image of open-mindedness and inclusivity. In addition, their songs serve to ease audiences into paying attention to the more overt ideological messages presented through the programme’s dialogue segments.
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Lull, J. 1991. China Turned On: TV Reform and Resistance. London: Routledge.
Ma, E. K. W. 2000. ‘Renationalization and Me: My Hong Kong Story after 1997’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1(1): 173–79.
Moskowitz, M. L. 2010. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and its Cultural Connotations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Sun, W. 2002. Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Teng, E. 2006. ‘Eurasian Hybridity in Chinese Utopian Visions: From “One World” to “A Society Based on Beauty” and Beyond’. positions: east asia cultures critique 14(1): 131–63.
van Leeuwen, T. 1999. Speech, Music, Sound. London: Macmillan.
Wang Mingquan. 2009. ‘A Long and Arduous Journey, But Always Love’ on The Same Song— Tomorrow Will Be Even Better (Mingtian hui geng hao), available online at: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=MGpIm8bbL4Y&feature=related (accessed 1 June 2011).
Woronov, T. E. 2007. ‘Performing the Nation: China’s Children as Little Red Pioneers’. Anthropological Quarterly 80(3): 647–72.
Xie Tingfeng. 2003. Xie Tingfeng at the anti-SARS ‘1:99’ concert, 24 May, online at: http://v. youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMyNDg1MjE2.html (accessed 1 June 2011).
Yu, Y. 2001. ‘Can the News Media Meet the Challenges in China’s Post-Deng Reform?’ In Transition Towards Post-Deng China, ed. X. Hu and G. Lin, 195–218. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Zhao, B. 1999. ‘Mouthpiece or Money-Spinner?: The Double Life of Chinese Television in the Late 1990s’. International Journal of Cultural Studies 2: 291–305.
Zhao, Y. 1998. Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Zhong, Y. 1998. ‘Mass or Master’s Medium? A Case Study of Chinese TV Talk Shows’. Asia Pacific Media Educator 5 (January–June): 92–102.
Zhu, Y. 2008. Television in Post-Reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership and the Global Television Market. Abingdon: Routledge.
Zhu, Y., and C. Berry. 2008. ‘Introduction’. In TV China, ed. Y. Zhu and C. Berry, 1–14. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991 [1983]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn. London: Verso.
Ang, I. 1998. ‘Can One Say No to Chineseness? Pushing the Limits of the Diasporic Paradigm’. Boundary 2 25(3): 223–42.
Baranovitch, N. 2003. China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender and Politics, 1978– 1997. Berkeley: University of California Press.
BBC. 1984. ‘Britain Signs over Hong Kong to China’. BBC News, 19 December, online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/19/newsid_2538000/ 2538857.stm.
Brady, A. M. 2008. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
Brunt, S. 2007. ‘ “Changing Japan, Unchanging Japan”: Shifting Visions of the Red and White Song Contest’. In A Song for Europe: Eurovision, Popular Music, and the Politics of Kitsch, ed. I. Raykoff and R. Tobin, 171–82. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Bulag, U. E. 2010. ‘Alter/native Mongolian Identity: From Nationality to Ethnic Group’. In Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, 3rd edn, ed. E. J. Perry and M. Selden, 261–87. Abingdon: RoutledgeCurzon.
Chan, J. M. 2008. ‘Toward Television Regionalization in Greater China and Beyond’. In TV China, ed. Y. Zhu and C. Berry, 15–39. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Chang, W. H. 1989. Mass Media in China: The History and the Future. Ames: Iowa State Press.
Chow, R. 1998. ‘Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem’. Boundary 2 25(3): 1–24.
Chow, Y. F. 2007. ‘Descendants of the Dragon, Sing!’ In Cosmopatriots: On Distant Belongings and Close Encounters, ed. E. Jurriëns and J. de Kloet, 95–104. New Amsterdam: Rodopi.
—2009. ‘Me and the Dragon: A Lyrical Engagement with the Politics of Chineseness’. InterAsia Cultural Studies 10(4): 544–64.
Chua, B. H. 2006. ‘Gossip about Stars: Newspapers and Pop Culture in China’. In Media and the Chinese Diaspora: Community, Communications and Commerce, ed. W. Sun, 75–90. London: Routledge.
—2008. ‘Structure of Identification in Watching East Asian Television Drama’. In East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, ed. B. H. Chua and K. Iwabuchi, 73–90. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Cook, N. 1998. Analysing Musical Multimedia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Da, Y. ?? 2005. ‘Zhang Mingmin’s Life Journey’ [???????]. Beijing Broadcasting Television People Weekly [???????????], 27 January, online at: http:// www.gmw.cn/content/2005-01/27/content_160612.htm.
de Kloet, J. 2003. ‘Confusing Confucius: Rock in Contemporary China’. In Policing Pop, ed. M. Cloonan and R. Garofalo, 166–85. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Dikötter, F. 1992. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. London: C. Hurst and Co.
Duara, P. 1996. ‘De-Constructing the Chinese Nation’. In Chinese Nationalism, ed. J. Unger, 31–55. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Fung, A. 2003. ‘Marketing Popular Culture in China: Andy Lau as a Pan-Chinese Icon’. In Chinese Media, Global Contexts, ed. C. C. Lee, 257–69. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
—2007. ‘The Emerging (National) Popular Music Culture in China’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8(3): 425–37.
—2008. ‘Western Style, Chinese Pop: Jay Chou’s Rap and Hip-Hop in China’. Asian Music 39(1): 69–80.
—2009. ‘Globalizing Televised Culture: The Case of China’. In Television Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era, ed. G. Turner and J. Tay, 178–88. London: Routledge.
Fung, A., and E. Ma. 2002. ‘ “Satellite Modernity”: Four Modes of Televisual Imagination in the Disjunctive Socio-Mediascape of Guangzhou’. In Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis, ed. S. H. Donald, M. Keane, and Y. Hong, 67–79. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Gorbman, C. 1987. Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. London: Indiana University Press.
Hall, S. 1992. ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’. In Modernity and its Futures, ed. S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew, 273–325. Cambridge: Polity Press/Open University.
Holm, D. L. 1991. Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hong, J. 1998. The Internationalization of Television in China: The Evolution of Ideology, Society, and Media Since the Reform. Westport: Praeger.
Huang, C. 2007. ‘Editorial: From Control to Negotiation: Chinese Media in the 2000s’. International Communication Gazette 69: 402–412.
Huang, Y., and X. Yu. 1997. ‘Broadcasting and Politics: Chinese Television in the Mao Era, 1958–1976’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 17(4): 563–74.
Jones, A. F. 2001. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Leung, L. 2008. ‘Mediating Nationalism and Modernity: The Transnationalization of Korean Dramas on Chinese (Satellite) TV’. In East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, ed. B. H. Chua and K. Iwabuchi, 53–69. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Lo, S. S. H. 2008. The Dynamics of Beijing-Hong Kong Relations: A Model for Taiwan? Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Lull, J. 1991. China Turned On: TV Reform and Resistance. London: Routledge.
Ma, E. K. W. 2000. ‘Renationalization and Me: My Hong Kong Story after 1997’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1(1): 173–79.
Moskowitz, M. L. 2010. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and its Cultural Connotations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Sun, W. 2002. Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Teng, E. 2006. ‘Eurasian Hybridity in Chinese Utopian Visions: From “One World” to “A Society Based on Beauty” and Beyond’. positions: east asia cultures critique 14(1): 131–63.
van Leeuwen, T. 1999. Speech, Music, Sound. London: Macmillan.
Wang Mingquan. 2009. ‘A Long and Arduous Journey, But Always Love’ on The Same Song— Tomorrow Will Be Even Better (Mingtian hui geng hao), available online at: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=MGpIm8bbL4Y&feature=related (accessed 1 June 2011).
Woronov, T. E. 2007. ‘Performing the Nation: China’s Children as Little Red Pioneers’. Anthropological Quarterly 80(3): 647–72.
Xie Tingfeng. 2003. Xie Tingfeng at the anti-SARS ‘1:99’ concert, 24 May, online at: http://v. youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMyNDg1MjE2.html (accessed 1 June 2011).
Yu, Y. 2001. ‘Can the News Media Meet the Challenges in China’s Post-Deng Reform?’ In Transition Towards Post-Deng China, ed. X. Hu and G. Lin, 195–218. Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Zhao, B. 1999. ‘Mouthpiece or Money-Spinner?: The Double Life of Chinese Television in the Late 1990s’. International Journal of Cultural Studies 2: 291–305.
Zhao, Y. 1998. Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Zhong, Y. 1998. ‘Mass or Master’s Medium? A Case Study of Chinese TV Talk Shows’. Asia Pacific Media Educator 5 (January–June): 92–102.
Zhu, Y. 2008. Television in Post-Reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership and the Global Television Market. Abingdon: Routledge.
Zhu, Y., and C. Berry. 2008. ‘Introduction’. In TV China, ed. Y. Zhu and C. Berry, 1–14. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Published
2012-01-31
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Gorfinkel, L. (2012). Ideology and the performance of Chineseness: Hong Kong singers on the CCTV stage. Perfect Beat, 12(2), 107-128. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v12i2.107
