Chinese Contemporary Popular Culture: Postmodern Deconstruction of the Socialist Revolutionary Master Narrative

Abstract

The concern of this thesis in postmodernity in China. It explores postmodernity in Chinese popular culture and by analysis it shows how popular culture texts challenge the meta-narrative of socialist revolution. Contemporary philosophical theories and perspectives are used to analyse a range of modern film and drama scripts, novels, and youth culture phenomena. This postmodern analysis of a diverse but nonetheless representative range of Chinese popular culture exposes Chinese popular culture's postmodern intent, that is, (in part), to challenge and interrogate the dominance of the conservative, 'modern', meta-narrative as it is most often encapsulated in China within the paradigm of 'socialist revolution'.