Abstract
This article provides a feminist analysis of Chinese reality TV, using the recent makeover show— You Are So Beautiful (你怎么这么好看) as a case study. I argue that the notion of gender essentialism is highlighted in the production of You Are So Beautiful, which distances the Chinese show from its original American format— Queer Eye. This phenomenon is indicative of how existing gender power relations influence the production of popular cultural texts in post-reform China, where capitalism and authoritarianism weave a tangled web. The outcomes of the research articulate the interplay between post-socialist gender politics and reality TV production in the Chinese context.
Highlights
Reality TV has become a booming global business, with makeover shows representing an important genre of production in the industry (Redden 2018; Stone 2019)
The analysis identifies patterns established in the interactions occurring between the hosts and guests, as well as that between the hosts, to uncover elements reflecting the notion of gender essentialism therein
Based on a multimodal analysis, I noted that the notion of gender essentialism forms a key concept underlying the production of You Are So Beautiful
Summary
Reality TV has become a booming global business, with makeover shows representing an important genre of production in the industry (Redden 2018; Stone 2019). As Evans (2008) and Wallis (2015) note, post-socialist gender politics is an umbrella term, which describes the configuration of gender power relations in Chinese society by both capitalism and the authoritarian regime It captures the process through which Chinese businesses engage with the consumer market, in the wake of the CCP’s reform of the country’s socio-economic structures (Rofel 2007). With specific reference to the propaganda campaigns, we have seen the mouthpieces of the CCP participating in a series of gender-related public debates, which illustrate the Party’s official objection against the rise of masculine female (Li 2015a) and effeminate male celebrities (Zheng 2015) in Chinese popular cultures Such propaganda campaigns define non-essentialist gender representations as not in line with the so-called “core socialist moralities” since their existence poses threats to traditional familial values, which are considered as the “foundation of social harmony” (Ho et al 2018, 499). While such an analysis is secondary in the research design, it complements the findings of the multimodal analysis by allowing the research to account for the interplay between the production and consumption of Chinese reality TV shows
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