Remaking Red Classics in Post-Mao China

Stories of the Chinese revolution are deeply ingrained in the collective memories of the Chinese nation, and TV drama has turned out to be the most effective and affective cultural form in retelling these stories. This engaging and nuanced book offers a fascinating window on this highly dynamic and very intriguing facet of contemporary Chinese cultural politics.

-- Yuezhi Zhao, Author of Communication in China: Political Economy, Power and Conflict

Rigorously researched, highly informative, and convincingly argued, Qian Gong’s study of Red Classic adaptations is a compelling examination of the key role played by TV drama in the formation of social identities. Through attentive recourse to textual analyses and interviews, Remaking Red Classics in Post-Mao China situates its case studies within broad historical, economic, social and cultural contexts, offering an original and thought-provoking analysis of the permutations of socialist culture in contemporary China.

-- Paola Voci, Associate Professor of Chinese and Asian Studies, University of Otago

Gong’s book is a theoretically sophisticated and engaging study on a significant phenomenon - the revival of Red Classics through the highly commercialized genre of TV drama in today’s China. No other scholar has previously surveyed this phenomenon in such detail. With rich data and insight, the book shows how legacies of revolution become cultural capital, intertwined with nostalgia, commercial drive, and identity construction, in post-socialist China.

-- Geng Song, Associate Professor of China Studies, University of Hong Kong

What Gong has achieved, in fact, is a study that fully appreciates Chinese exceptionalism while revealing more universal, or at least anthropological, processes that the Chinese state and its popular drama share with others and with the past.

* Media International Australia *

Remaking Red Classics in Post-Mao China makes a significant contribution to existing scholarship in Chinese television studies and on the Red Classics and their remakes. The book’s literature review is extensive, and Gong’s analysis of earlier works is frequently both incisive and informative. Gong provides comprehensive examination of works by notable scholars in the field of Red Classic remakes, such as Li Yang, Richard King and Rosemary Roberts. Additionally, she analyzes relevant television and cultural studies theories, notably Althusser and his theory of interpellation, which is applied to her discussion of the TV dramas. The need for interpellation to be a primary theory applied to the Red Classic TV remakes is explained well. Gong’s book is also useful not only for Chinese scholars but also for outsiders looking to learn more about contemporary culture and society in the People’s Republic.

* Global Media and Chi