Past events
Chinese Popular Fiction from the Alleys to the Internet - 03/03/2016
- Venue: Research Beehive 2.20
- Start: Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:00:00 GMT
- End: Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:00:00 GMT
This talk will explore the diversification of Chinese popular fiction in the age of the internet and consider the historical and contemporary contexts behind some of the most popular texts to have taken hold of readers’ imaginations in recent years.
Throughout much of Chinese history, the category of fiction has been subject to moralising and repression in the hands of the country’s elites, written off as leftover history, gossip of the alleys or a source of immorality that threatens the social order. In China today, fiction of the more commercial or popular kind often comes in for similar treatment, criticised as “dumb writings” or “mental porn”.
At the same time, however, popular fiction has worked its way to the centre of China’s cultural industries and is currently being used as a primary source of creative content for the country’s film, television and computer game industries.
This talk will focus on the philosophical and social implications of the theme of time travel, a narrative trope that has been a source of both ideological consternation and huge economic success in recent years, in order to examine how digital media users and media organisations have helped to reinvent Chinese popular fiction in light of individual desires and changing technological, social and political imaginations.