Zhenxing Jiang

This article examines online re-creations of Chinese dance dramas (CDDs), a state-sponsored artform that over the past two decades has diluted its distinctly “red” appearance. Arguably, this transformation reflects China’s “discreet” top-down political communication approach that seeks popular consent while minimising overt, Party-based, “red” messaging. I analysed audiences’ re-creations and interviewed creators of such derivative works to under stand whether/how their works sustain that political discretion. I argue that while audiences’ re-creations shift away from the original political tones to focus on individualistic expression, they nonetheless constitute China’s dominant yet discreet political discourse in a resemiotised form. CDD re-creations afford popular and disembodying qualities, inviting audiences’ neoliberalised participatory and re-creative practices that align with the state’s popular and discreet political discourse. This article offers an instance of how the depoliticising logics of neoliberalism are given a distinct national articulation by catering to people’s political (dis)taste and individualistic purposes. In this process, explicit forms of state political indoctrination become diluted while at the same time the state’s official discourse gains bottom-up popularisation.

I offer a critical interpretation of the Chinese dance drama The Eternal Radio Waves, drawing on post-Marxist discourse theory and the concept of modal affordance. My analysis focuses on the segment, Song of the Fishermen, which diverges from the performance’s overtly political narrative. Lacking clear storytelling or ideological messaging, this segment has been dismissed by some audiences as ‘meaningless, useless, and abrupt’. Yet paradoxically, it has emerged as the most popular part of the production. I examine how modes and their affordances contribute to the making, anchoring, and reassurance of this perceived ‘meaninglessness’. I argue that Fishermen operates as a heterogeneous element – both detached from and articulated with the performance’s dominant political identity – rendering it simultaneously an ‘inside’ and apparent ‘outside’ of that identity. I conclude that Fishermen’s ‘meaninglessness’ is afforded by its extensive use of dance, while its latent political undertones are anchored through nodal points shaped by emotionally charged, antagonistic storytelling. Ultimately, Fishermen reassures its ‘meaninglessness’ by spiritualizing the political, invoking a quasi-religious affect to generate consent without articulating concrete shared meanings.