Abstract
Following discussion of the (non-)profit-driven subject and the implications of his acts with regard to the self, family, and community in Part I, Part II turns to the investigation of the socialist spirit in sexual terms and the control and the negotiations of the representations of sexual subjects. While Chapter 1 discusses the ideal selfless acts of ideal Party officials as presented in state-sanctioned Chinese media, this chapter will provide us an angle from which to glimpse the qualities of state-approved ideal citizens in their domestic setting, with a focus on their sexual virtue. The disintegration of the sublime figure notwithstanding, the state remains active in curbing overindulgence in sexual desire by creating faithful sexual subjects in the service of establishing a harmonious society and eliminating social instability in the familial structure. Even though contemporary on-screen sexual subjects and the off-screen general public appear to have more freedom than previously to embrace their personal sexual pleasure per se, state-sponsored productions attempt to shape people’s off-screen sexual subjectivity by creating an on-screen exemplary sexual subject and encouraging the institutionalization of sexuality in the form of marriage.
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Keywords
- Sexual Desire
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- Social Harmony
- Sexual Subject
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Notes
See Wu Changzhen, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo hunyin fa jianghua 中華人民共和國婚姻法講話 [Talk on Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China] (Beijing: Zhong yang wen xian chubanshe, 2001), 85.
Wu Xiaocheng, ed., Hunyinfa shiyongyu shenpan shiwu 婚姻法適用與番判貫 務 [Applications and practical issues of Marriage Law] (Beijing: Zhongguo fazhi chubanshe, 2008), 257.
Ying Zhu, Michael Keane, and Ruoyun Bai, “Introduction,” in TV Drama in China, ed. Ying Zhu, Michael Keane, and Ruoyun Bai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 8.
Jason McGrath’s theory of “cinema of infidelity” also applies in TV dramas in which it is the male character who has an extra-marital affair in urban settings. See Jason McGrath, Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 100.
SARFT, “Guojia guangbo dianshi zongiu guangyu yinfa ‘Dianshiju neiroung shencha zhanxing guiding’”國家廣播電影電視總局關於印發《電視劇內 谷番查暫行規定》的通知 [Notice on “Temporary regulations of the content censorship of TV drama” issued by SARFT], http://www.chinasarft.gov.cn/articles/2006/05/30/20091217145313220574.html (accessed February 23, 2012).
See Wang Lanzhu, chief ed., Zhongguo dianshi shoushi nianjian 2007 中國電 視收視年璧 [The yearbook of Chinese TV viewing rate] (Beijing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2007), 93.
Hu Zhanfan, “Clarify Requirements and Do Well All the Work for the Year 2007 in Resisting Low and Vulgar Tastes.” China Radio and TV Academic Journal, 5 (2007): 8–10.
See Sheldon Lu, “Soap Opera in China: The Transnational Politics of Visuality, Sexuality, and Masculinity.” Cinema Journal 40, no. 1 (2000): 31–32.
Wang Lanzhu, chief ed., Zhongguo dianshi shoushi nianjian 2008 中國電視收視 年鑒 [China TV rating yearbook] (Beijing: Zhongguo chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2009), 124.
Ibid.; and Falü chubanshe fagui zhongxin, ed., Hunyinfa quancheng jingjie 婚姻 法全程精解 [Succinct exposition of Marriage Law] (Beijing: Law Press China, 2008), 2.
Translation from Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China, 79. For official interpretation of the article, see Wu Changzhen, ed., Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo hunyin fa jianghua 中華人民共和國婚姻法講話 [Talk on Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2001), 87.
Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (New York; London: W. W. Norton, 1960), 120.
Shuyu Kong, “Family Matters: Reconstructing the Family on the Chinese Television Screen,” in TV Drama in China, ed. Ying Zhu, Michael Keane, and Ruoyun Bai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 75–88.
Svetlana Boym, Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 64.
Zao Ping, “Gongming shi meiyou guojie de” 共鳴是沒有國界的 [Resonance is boundaryless], in Dangdai dianshi 當代電視 [Contemporary TV] 11 (2008);
and He Mingxia, “Dianshiju Jinhun de xushi tedian” 電視劇《金婚》的叙事 特黒占 [Narrative features of the TV drama Golden Marriage], Dianying wenxue 電影文學 [Movie literature] 21 (2008): 91.
Michael Berry, A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 289, 297.
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1998), 108. I thank Prof. Peng Yun at the 59th Mid-West Conference on Asian Studies for suggesting this reference to Foucault in order to better explain the power relationship between the law, sexual freedom, and family.
Ye Yi, Zhong Nanshan zhuan 缠南山傳 [The life of Zhong Nanshan] (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2010), 75–81.
Confucius, Li Ch’i. Book of Rites: An Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions, vol. 2, trans. James Legg (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1967), 412.
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© 2015 Wing Shan Ho
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Ho, W.S. (2015). Golden Marriage: An Exemplary Marriage and a Harmonious Society. In: Screening Post-1989 China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137514707_4
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