When nationalism meets hip-hop: aestheticized politics of ideotainment in China

This essay unravels the coalescence between bottom-up youth culture and state-led ideological work in China by examining the patriotic hip-hop music videos of a Chinese youth band. I attend to the ways in which the state-centric ideology is aesthetically evoked by co-opting popular cultural formats,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCommunication and critical/cultural studies Vol. 16; no. 3; pp. 178 - 195
Main Author Zou, Sheng
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 03.07.2019
Subjects
aura
hip-hop
ideological state apparatus
ideotainment
nationalism
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Summary:This essay unravels the coalescence between bottom-up youth culture and state-led ideological work in China by examining the patriotic hip-hop music videos of a Chinese youth band. I attend to the ways in which the state-centric ideology is aesthetically evoked by co-opting popular cultural formats, maneuvering grassroots nationalistic expressions and appropriating symbols of both tradition and modernity. Hip-hop is thus localized and sanitized as a cultural medium of propaganda. The limitations of such co-optative tactics are also discussed, particularly the tradeoff between ideological control and authentic expressivity, and the risk of de-sublimating auratic cultural symbols for political persuasion.
ISSN:1479-1420
1479-4233
DOI:10.1080/14791420.2019.1637008