| Zhao Benshan Phenomenon is an important cultural phenomenon during the development of modern society in the past30years. The complicated and rich cultural connotation in this phenomenon has attracted much attention of the mass public. Meanwhile, its development and alternation is the microcosm of the development and transition of Chinese Modern Culture over the recent30years. Zhao Benshan's statue image has become the symbol of Chinese Modern Politics and Culture, while the acknowledgement with his cultural image has already become a metaphor to the embarrassment and helplessness of the choices and development of Chinese Culture over these decades. Besides, it also reveals a plural mixing cultural perspective.The emphasis of this paper lies not only in the interpretation of Zhao Benshan Phenomenon, but also in discovering the conflict and emerge among social cultural forces, the differentiation and contrast among cultural standpoints and the intense game relationship so as to explain effectively the development of this phenomenon over the recent twenty years, and therefore to inspect dynamically the cultural choices and spiritual transition of modern society, and to supply a broader thinking space for this culture mixing era. This paper takes the public culture and mass media as a basic statement context and background, including6parts:The Introduction part teases apart the object forms that Zhao Benshan Phenomenon has become a unique cultural introspect in Modern cultural context, and briefly introduced the process that Zhao Benshan develops from a pair-show artist to "the King of sketch performance" and to a TV Industry Tycoon in the mixed environment of official, elite, public and media forces. Meanwhile, on the basis of identifying the speech context in this paper, relating to the relative problems to be solved surrounding Zhao Benshan Phenomenon, we expend our horizon to the reflection of cultural development and transition of the whole modern society. We try to investigate the dynamic development of this phenomenon and to seek the internal root of cultural transition and spiritual transfer of Chinese society over the recent decades. Finally, on the basis of integrating research materials, we try to introduce briefly the current research of Zhao Benshan Phenomenon and raise our own research method exploratively.Chapter one, Pair-Show·CCTV New Year Gala·TV plays and Movie:three leaps stimulated by mass media. In this chapter, the main clue is the three representative stages of Zhao Benshan over the recent30years. Along with this clue, we analyzed the dynamic process of the development of this phenomenon, and explored how Zhao Benshan accomplished his "three leaps" under the circumstance of powerful context emerge of the mass media. Pair-Show is of Zhao Benshan's art history, which has been deeply and unconsciously rooted in his later artistic creation. Through the reformation to pair-show art, Zhao Benshan pushes pair-show from countryside to the city, which changes the loose surviving environment of this kind of art. After the broadcasting of media like Television,"pair-show" art changes from "folk art" to "popular art". Zhao's gifted performance and unique folklore artistic temperament revealed in pair-show art satisfied the demand of the mainstream Chinese culture system of the90s in the20th century to the image of farmers and regional culture expenses. Zhao transforms from "marginalized" farmer to the king of sketch performance on the mainstream stage. So far, Zhao's sketch performance has become a special cultural symbol, which is creating a dream of entertainment for the Chinese public. The crown of "sketch performance king" and the acknowledgement of mainstream culture helped Zhao to construct powerful platform and social relationship network. In the motivation of constructing his own core brand, Zhao successfully extended the attention for "sketch performance king" to his TV production. Taking the advantage of TV encoding and broadcasting, he upgraded the pair-show and comedic sketch performance of Dongbei characteristic to TV productions. From "king of sketch performance" to tycoon of TV plays, Zhao began to walk on a boulevard of cultural industry development. The formation of any kind of cultural phenomenon cannot leave the absorption, integration and construction of the cultural context in the whole era. Zhao's transformation from pair-show artist to "king of sketch performance" and to the tycoon of TV industry, includes the adjustment, defense and gaming between his art and the mainstream ideology, the conflict and compromise with realistic benefit, and also the meaning production and symbolic broadcasting given by the mass media.Chapter Two Folk art.imagination of the mass.ideology of the powerful:three in one under the control of popular ideology. This chapter bases on the three major culture features revealed in Zhao Benshan's artistic texts. It analyzes the uniqueness and richness in Zhao's performances, attempting to expose the way how the three features are combined into his artistic production. Folk art is one of the typical features in Zhao's texts. This feature is borrowed from the culture of "local humor", which involves both performances on festivals and life experiences as a common people with low social and economic status. The raw, rough buffooning added to the performance from time to time, on the one hand suggests the vivid, powerful strength of folk art. On the other hand, this folk art also stains Zhao's art with hideous contents. In his art, the folk experiences, the everyday ones and the popular ones are mixed by express and describe through imagination the mass's living conditions, cultural values, political and economic activities, morality, dreams, spirits and so on. In this way, the mass could enjoy themselves in a fictional world in which they are watching and being watched at the same time. Why Zhao's art could become so successful among the folks, the mass and even those in powers is closely related to ability of recognizing the society and his strategy of expression. In such multi-dimensional cultural structure, the comedies by Zhao Benshan, as a practice of mass culture, are bound to exist and grow in the duel control of the country and the taste of the mass. Zhao Benshan applies the language the mass use to express the converted national ideology of politics in the way the peasant could understand. He makes use of differences in language between the official and the mass to gain universally recognized effects of being funny. Its "micro-irony" indicates the prosperity of the country, which is not only welcomed by the leading party, but also fit in with the taste of the mass. Its closeness to the public ultimately forms the cultural practice of the mass with folk art, imagination of the mass and ideology of the powerful united.Chapter Three The official.elite.the mass:the unite of the three on the basis of commercialization. This chapter clears the complicated relations between the official, elite and the mass, three major social forces, and "Zhao Benshan Phenomenon", exploring the culture embodied in "Zhao Benshan Phenomemon" by multi-social forces. The Spring Festival Carnival provides Zhao Benshan with a perfect stage and various opportunities for further development. CCTV, as the TV station that owns the largest number of audiences also needs Zhao Benshan and his products to exhibit "farmer's lives", so that they could achieve cultural balance. Together, they have attracted numerous followers and huge amount of material benefit. On the other hand, the culture group of elite, who have already moved out of the centre of social stage, have shown great concern to Zhao Benshan Phenomenon and have given entirely opposite comments. This indicates the great attraction of Zhao Benshan Phenomenon as a feature of social culture, and the conflicts and splitting up of values from different social levels in contemporary society. These conflicts lead to a new turn of culture disorder. Under the mutual effects of media and market, the taste of the mass in contemporary society has change significantly. The pursuit of physical satisfaction has become the main aesthetic purpose of the mass. Zhao Benshan's production of "satisfaction" could meet the need of the mass, by setting "being funny" as the focus of comedy creation, which has resulted in the phenomenon that physical satisfaction is the only purpose and the entertainment of the mass has changed into "searching for fun" among various fantasies.Chapter Four Comedy.Mystical stories.Tyranny:a trio in the times when people entertain to the fullest. This chapter examine from a higher culture perspective Zhao Benshan's trio in which comedy, mystical stories and tyranny participate. These three refer to Zhao Benshan's short crosstalks, TV series and other cultural products. It is not exaggerating to say that Zhao is the label of this comedian time. He makes fun of others, as well as himself, creating both wise fun and vulgar one. Nevertheless, when all the people in the society are pursuing entertainment, his unique comedian elements have weakened its function of being wise and critical, with only superficial and meaningless laughters left. Won the market as it has, it has lost the status of a comedy. In order to expand his project of "fun business", Zhao Benshan created a set of TV series very much like production chains in industry, building a mystical story of fun about the country and the poor. The enterprise Zhao builds symbolizes his success in creating an empire of entertainment. And entertaining to the fullest becomes a new experience of culture tyranny, causing transformation of powers in the sphere of culture.Conclusion The mirror and metaphor of contemporary culture in China In the conclusion part, the dissertation summarizes the entire above chapters and metaphorically refers to Zhao Benshan Phenomenon as a mirror, reflecting the status and puzzle of contemporary culture. Through the analysis of the inner culture logic and outer social atmosphere of Zhao Benshan Phenomenon, the author hopes to re-recognize the root causes of many problems in contemporary culture, regain the long-abandoned virtue of thinking. Through the questioning of the significance of self-existence, the dissertation aims at continuingly knowing the world, the society and ourselves.
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