Product placement with ‘Chinese characteristics’: Feng Xiaogang's films and Go Lala Go!

Abstract

This study examines the practice of product placement (or ‘soft advertisement’/ruanxing guanggao) in Chinese cinema in order to create an understanding of the specific realities of film production and consumption. The return of consumer culture, instead of nostalgically recreating the ruined socialist past, engenders the imaginary of a ‘brand’ new China of the global future. Commercialization of film and television exploits the emerging practice of product placement as economic necessity and a reflection of the urban consumer culture. The director Feng Xiaogang, encouraged by the private film company Huayi Brothers, exemplifies the integration of product placement in a series of high-budget box-office hits. Feng's films, Feichang wurao/If You are the One (2008) and its sequel (2010), successfully merge the narratives surrounding the new urban middle class and their conspicuous consumption in China and abroad. Adapted from a popular ‘workplace’ novel, Du Lala shengzhi ji/The Promotion of Du Lala (2007), Xu Jinglei's Go Lala Go! (2010), a chick flick aimed at white-collar women, places products including luxury cars, apartments, personal goods, fashion items and laptops, while downplaying office politics in favour of love and consumption as its main tropes. Through examining product placement in Feng's films and Go Lala Go!, this study analyses why twenty-first-century Chinese cinema merges entertainment and commercial culture, and how the practice reflects the emergence of consumer culture in China and the specificity of the use of product placement in Chinese cinema.