Panel 25: Reimagining East Asian Popular Culture: State, Aesthetics, and Capital in the Digital Age

Chair: Fenglin Selina Ju, University of Michigan

This panel proposes to explore contemporary East Asian popular culture within the context of digital networks with diverse forms of media participation. Through an exploration of popular cultural genres such as TV series, video games, and idol culture, our research papers offer multifaceted insights to reconceptualize digital narratives within the frameworks of state, aesthetics, and capital. We argue that digital connections facilitate a complex interplay of power dynamics between the state and individuals, sensory experiences of human-technology interaction, and the ecosystem of fandom emotional labor, thereby reshaping cultural discourse on a daily basis through a plurality of media encounters in China.

The panel posits online engagement as essential media material for understanding the East Asian digital landscape by analyzing three distinct modes of media participation. Siyu Shen examines the intricate challenges faced by “boys love” (BL) fan groups amidst government censorship of queer-related media content, implying their unescapable and passive internalization of homophobia with the case study of The Untamed, a BL-adapted web series and its fan groups. Yining Lilia Yan explores Genshin Impact, a widely disseminated video game from China, in terms of its Japanese cultural elements and appropriated perception in the Chinese audience. Yan argues that Genshin Impact functions as the primary medium for Chinese players’ online discourse in negotiating national identity and cultural exchange and appropriation. Focusing on aesthetic sensations, Fenglin Selina Ju investigates the transformative interpretation of digital intimacy displayed in the Otome game, a video game genre featuring heterosexual romance targeting female players. With the case study of Light and Night, Ju explores multiple media aesthetics and contents that substantiate romantic fantasies with lifelike sensations. Xiaodan Wang adopts a comparative perspective to study the fandom of Japanese net idols and Chinese live streaming and highlights the alienating effects of performing physical and mental labor in the contemporary electronic network. The shift from exploitation of digital labor to emotional labor remains under-acknowledged in the Chinese context.

The papers collectively reveal divergent and yet intersecting online experiences and digital participation and demonstrate how the state, aesthetics, and capital significantly entangle and transform the digital landscape in contemporary East Asia.

Panelists

Siyu Shen, University of Pennsylvania, “The Power Dynamics Among Fan Groups, Weibo, and the Governmental Censorship Around The Untamed”

Cultural resistance uses meanings and symbols, that is, culture, to challenge dominant power structures. Antonio Gramsci characterizes it as a “war of position,” seeking to foster a resilient culture where individuals contest and reconfigure ideological constructs, thereby reaching a counter-hegemonic culture. In the Chinese digital age, nevertheless, cultural resistance predominantly unfolds on social media platforms, necessitating participants to navigate governmental online censorship as a preliminary step against dominant powers.

This paper focuses on the discourse surrounding the Chinese “boys love” (BL) adapted web series, a genre depicting romantic relationships between male protagonists without explicit intimate scenes, on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. This paper analyzes the interaction between fan groups and government censorship regarding homosexual content, using the case study of The Untamed (2019), one of the most popular Chinese BL web series, and its associated online fan community.

Through an organizational analysis of The Untamed fan group and a legal analysis of Chinese governmental regulations on homosexuality, Weibo privacy terms, and the Weibo reporting system, this paper explains the challenges faced by BL fan groups in Chinese online cultural resistance. The government’s ambiguous stance toward homosexuality leads to the fan groups’ difficulty in reference. Whether resistance or appeasement occurs, participants grapple to identify the terms, provisions, and authoritarian powers they contend with.

I argue that due to governmental digital censorship, The Untamed fan groups have inadvertently accepted and internalized the state’s hierarchical structure and its homophobic stance, exacerbating the marginalization of homosexual content in China.

Keywords: media studies, cultural resistance, participatory resistance, online censorship, BL fandom, Chinese web series

Xiaodan Wang, Duke University, “Alienation of Labors and Fans in Digital Economy—From Digital Labor to Emotional Labor”

Digital labor can be reduced to the act of producing digital content on a capitalist model. Although it generates a certain amount of social impact, it is often seen as a non-labor. In the digital age, industrial capitalism's exploitation of workers' surplus value is mirrored by the alienation of digital labor's spiritual and physical aspects within the contemporary electronic network. Emotional labor is considered a subset of immaterial labor. New forms of technologically controlled labor shift from digital technology to individual emotions in the digital era.

This paper analyzes two main groups in digital labor, which are labors themselves and their fans. First, this paper analyzes the careers of Japanese net idols where the production of cute culture is seen as the core of their labor, which requires a great deal of emotional effort. This paper initially contends how Japanese net idols have been marginalized into performing unpaid emotional labor within the digital economy. Second, fans are both followers and content co-producers of net idols. Meanwhile, fans become the main body of this emotional labor. This labor is based on satisfying the needs of the self, so in this process, fans are not aware of or even willingly alienated into emotional labor. Through analysis of two types of fan bases—those of Japanese net idols in the early 21st century and those of Chinese live-streaming platforms in recent years—this paper aims to examine how fan bases within the digital economy are alienated from digital labor to emotional labor.

Keywords: media studies, digital labor, emotional labor, Japanese net idol, Chinese livestreaming, fandom

Yining Lilia Yan, Duke University, “Cultural Authenticity and Appropriation through Chinese Video Games: A Case Study of Genshin Impact”

Genshin Impact is an online action role-playing game developed by the Chinese company MiHoYo and designed to let players explore the fantasy open world. The game has achieved remarkable global popularity, transcending its role as merely an entertainment phenomenon. It has emerged as a significant medium for disseminating Chinese culture, attributed largely to its rich game content. However, the game deftly appropriates and takes over Japanese anime style and gameplay, expanding beyond a singular cultural narrative centered on China. Outside the sphere of gaming, there is an ongoing debate about whether Genshin Impact, with its incorporation of Japanese anime styles, still belongs to Chinese culture. This research delves into the paradox of reconstructing “authentic” Chineseness in modern times by the use of Japanese cultural elements within Genshin Impact despite the pervasive antagonism towards Japan in China. Additionally, it investigates how players affirm the game’s Chinese identity amidst debating on its appropriation of Japanese stylistic elements, exploring how this irony reveals Chinese players’ perceptions of cultural authenticity. This research contributes to broader discussions on cultural authenticity, appropriation, and the construction of Chinese nationalism in digital media, particularly in the context of the growing influence of video games as a medium for cultural dissemination.

Keywords: media studies, cultural appropriation, authenticity, nationalism, Chinese video game, online discourse

Fenglin Selina Ju, University of Michigan, “Digital Intimacy and Intermedia Storytelling in Chinese Otome Games—A Case Study of Light and Night”

Digital intimacy, facilitated by the latest digital technologies and media interfaces, expands the sense-scape of romance from in-person human contacts to human-technology interaction. Previous scholarship employs the framework of digital intimacy largely from the transition between privacy and publicity, such as online dating and live streaming. This paper introduces the Chinese Otome game, a female-oriented dating game genre that originated in Japan and captivated millions of female players in China in the past few years, and reveals the sensory dimensions and interactive experiences of digital intimacy. The discussion focuses on the game design with the case study of Light and Night, one of the top four mobile Chinese Otome games. I examine how interfaces, in-game playing functions that imitate social media platforms, and voice performance construct digital intimacy, with which players navigate ideal romance and interaction on the Internet in contemporary urban China. By conducting digital game interface analysis and critical game studies, this research elaborates on the transformative role of Chinese Otome games in expressing and shaping intimacy accelerated by new media technologies. As Otome games involve textual, visual, and sonic materials, this paper further explores the ignored significance of multidimensional experiences in fulfilling the imagined fantasy in fictional storytelling. By reading and listening, online participants negotiate a space that blurs the boundaries between virtuality and reality in Chinese cyberspace. The Otome game, I argue, is a convergence of diverse media products and expands the scope of digital intimacy with various non-semantic materials.

Keywords: Chinese popular culture, media studies, digital intimacy, digital storytelling, Chinese sound culture