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Whose Voice?: A Critical Analysis of Identity, Media, and Popular Music in The Voice of China

Jiang, Xinxin
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0735-0308
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1530233479992508

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies.
This manuscript explores the relationships among identity, media, and popular music in Chinese society through an examination of a televised singing competition franchise, The Voice of China. I attempt to understand what role popular culture, in the form of a contemporary popular cultural product, plays in Chinese people’s everyday life and how the show is a site where Chinese people articulate, interrogate and negotiate aspects of identity. I provide a textual analysis to interpret the meaningful details of each episode while employing a critical-cultural approach to understand the socio-historical contexts and the online discourse that are conducive to the uniqueness of the international franchise. More specifically, I examine how societal discourses on the blind audition and the voting systems of the show reveal growing public awareness of and concern with issues of equity and fairness in the cultural arena of traditional aesthetic standards as well as the societal arena of electoral politics. I also explore how the show reinforces the ruling Party’s appropriations of nationalism in a sophisticated way to highlight a unified and supreme national voice, how it reflects both a loosening grip of the central government on gender representation and a growing social leniency toward gender diversity, and finally how the voice diversity was constructed by individuals who are in possession of or in need of various forms of social capital and who are from geographically diverse and economically disparate social backgrounds. I point out that The Voice of China offers a prime site to understand how the discourses of politics, (trans)nationality, ethnicity, gender, and class intersect with each other in the situated context and hopefully, such a discussion can raise the cultural awareness to challenge institutional power and social norms in order to hear the diversified voices in Chinese society.
Alberto González (Advisor)
Angela Ahlgren (Other)
Katherine Meizel (Committee Member)
Becca Cragin (Committee Member)
223 p.
Asian Studies; Gender Studies; Mass Media; Music
Reality TV; Popular Music; Nationalism; Gender; Class; Intersectionality

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jiang, X. (2018). Whose Voice?: A Critical Analysis of Identity, Media, and Popular Music in The Voice of China [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1530233479992508

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jiang, Xinxin. Whose Voice?: A Critical Analysis of Identity, Media, and Popular Music in The Voice of China. 2018. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1530233479992508.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jiang, Xinxin. "Whose Voice?: A Critical Analysis of Identity, Media, and Popular Music in The Voice of China." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1530233479992508

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1530233479992508
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© 2018, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.