Youth Film in the New Millennium: Ideology, Culture, and Subjectivity of the Chinese Middle Class

Abstract

This thesis offers a detailed analysis of the rise of Chinese youth films in the new millennium within the theoretical framework of hegemony for the study of popular culture. It argues that the significance of these films lies in their social politics, rather than their formal qualities, and interprets the swift rise of the genre in relation to the production of consent amid the antagonistic relations of the middle and dominant classes that is the fundamental social formation in contemporary China. This perspective integrates economy, class, ideology, and culture to analyse the genre’s growth, offering a social and political map that a reading of any individual film cannot achieve. This thesis initially reviews the history of cultural studies’ assessment of the relationship between class, ideology, and culture. Next, it examines three types of popular representations in three subgenres of youth film: the carnivalesque loser, the fashionable girl, and the nostalgic student. These are identified as having roots in the middle class and its complex relationship with consumerism. In turn, each of these types articulates the hegemony of consumerism through the pursuit of pleasure, fashion seeking, and nostalgic indulgence respectively. Taken together, the rise of these youth films manifests a recognizably collective middle-class consciousness. This thesis argues that these articulations of consumerist hegemony destabilize both socialist and Confucian morality, ethics, and aesthetics, generating disruptive pleasure. The genre therefore resonates with middle-class audiences by subverting socialist and Confucian values yet is permitted by the Chinese authorities because all three subgenres acknowledge socialist supremacy through their happy endings. Ultimately, ideological coordination is realized in the genre’s hybrid form, wherein social repression is made visible but ambiguous. Ideological coordination (the production of consent), in relation to the prevailing social order, mainly contributes to the rise of the youth film. This ideological coordination simultaneously enacts and cultivates the subjectivity of these representations as subordinated, consumerist, patriarchal, and egoistic, which is demanded by authority. Consequently, the middle class is conceptualized as ready-managed and stitched into the authoritarian system by the circulation of these films. A sense of social cohesion is conveyed in the public sphere. The thesis concludes that the rise of the youth film allows the newly emerging middle class to be recognized and represented in the public sphere, while at the same time being managed. Moreover, the tremendous popularity of the genre can be said to lie in its ambiguous politics, which are both progressive and conservative, while still upholding authority. Overall, this study provides a significant viewpoint on the interplay between class, ideology, politics, and popular culture within the hegemony theory framework, particularly in a society characterized by authoritarianism and consumerism, by analysing the prevalence of youth films. Meanwhile, this analysis prompts critical inquiries regarding the revision of hegemony theory that includes the nature of hegemony, the constitution of the ideological formation, and the relationship between hegemony and subjectivity in the contemporary era.