Costume Drama and the Transformation of Chinese Primetime Television

FAIN: FB-51926-05

Ying Zhu
CUNY Research Foundation, College of Staten Island (Staten Island, NY 10314-6609)

This project examines the dynamic interplay between Chinese primetime television programming and a Chinese media infrastructure at the mercy of both the market and the party. It traces the institutional as well as the stylistic transitions of Chinese primetime dramatic programs from anthology dramas of the 1980s to serialized dramas of the 1990s, particularly the ascendance in the late 1990s and the early 2000s of palace dramas set in the Qing dynasty, what the Chinese term "Qing drama." The narrative strategies of the Qing drama are compared to those of US primetime hour long drama and the Latin American telenovela to explore models for Chinese serial television programming and their cultural implications.

Associated Products

TV China (Book)
Title: TV China
Editor: Chris Berry
Abstract: If radio and film were the emblematic media of the Maoist era, television has rapidly established itself as the medium of the "marketized" China and in the diaspora. In less than two decades, television has become the dominant medium across the Chinese cultural world. TV China is the first anthology in English on this phenomenon. Covering the People's Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora, these twelve original essays introduce and analyze the Chinese television industry, its programming, the policies shaping it, and its audiences.
Year: 2009
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Type: Edited Volume

TV drama in China (Book)
Title: TV drama in China
Author: Michael Keane and Ruoyun Bai
Abstract: This collection of essays brings together the first comprehensive study of TV drama produced and distributed in China. The international team of experts demonstrates why TV drama remains the pre-eminent media form in China. The examples are diverse, highlighting the complexity of producing narrative content in a rapidly changing political and social environment. Genres examined include the revisionist Qing drama, historical and contemporary domestic dramas, anti-corruption dramas, "pink" dramas, Red Classics, stories from the Diaspora, and sit-coms. In addition to genres, the collection explores industry dynamics: how TV dramas are marketed and consumed on DVD, and China's aspirations to export its television drama rights. The book provides an international and cross-cultural perspective with chapters on Taiwanese TV drama in China, the impact of South Korean drama, and trans-border production between the Mainland and Hong Kong.
Year: 2008
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Type: Edited Volume

Television in Post-Reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership and Global Television Market (Book)
Title: Television in Post-Reform China: Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership and Global Television Market
Abstract: The book discusses how public/popular discourse has been powerfully channeled through the development of China's most popular television programming -- serial dramas in primetime – and parallels this with the leading intellectual debates and movements of the era and the rhetoric and policies of the state. It also provides cross-cultural comparisons that parallel the textual and institutional strategies of transnational Chinese language TV dramas with dramas from the three leading centers of transnational television production, the US, Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, and the Korean-led East Asia region. The comparison reveals creative connections while it also explores how the emergence of a Chinese cultural-linguistic market, together with other cultural-linguistic markets, complicates the power dynamics of global cultural flows.
Year: 2008
Publisher: Routledge
Type: Single author monograph

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