Reflection And Disenchantment:Analysis Of "Wang Xiaobo Phenomenon"

On April 11,1997,the writer Wang Xiaobo died unexpectedly of a heart attack.Since then,"Wang Xiaobo fever" has become an important cultural phenomenon in contemporary China.Under li Yinhe’s promotion,Wang Xiaobo’s novels and essays were successively published and republished by major publishing houses after his death,and materials related to Wang Xiaobo’s life also appeared in the form of biographies and commemorative collections.The publishing fever and publicity fever caused wang Xiaobo’s "imitation fever" and "discussion fever" in the network space.At the same time,the recognition from official academic,cultural,educational and media organizations also makes the writer Wang Xiaobo gradually mainstream and classic.However,in the context of consumption,"Wang Xiaobo" has undoubtedly become a cultural hot spot,loved and pursued by the market.In the process of wang Xiaobo’s gradual "hot" rise,it also reflects the participation and interaction of various forces.First of all,the mass media,led by Southern Weekend and Sanlian Life Weekly,used the strategy of "freedom/autocracy","victims of literature" and "silence" in the literary world to publicize Wang Xiaobo,making him a name card for resisting the "official".Secondly,with the help of wang Xiaobo’s identity as a "freelance writer" and the color of empirical rationality in his essays,liberals juxtatize him with Gu Zhun and Chen Yinke in the context of liberal theory.Moreover,in the new cyberspace,Wang Xiaobo has become the "spiritual mentor" of many young literary people,who identify with wang in emotion and imitate him in action.In fact,there is a collusion between the mass media and the liberal intellectuals in wang Xiaobo’s "liberalism".They share discourses opposing authority and defending "the weak",and their audiences are mostly middle class or pre-middle class emerging in the drastic changes of social structure.Wang Xiaobo speaks with a strong attitude as a "weak person",which is consistent with the inner appeal of the middle class.Therefore,they have obtained the confirmation of their own identity in Wang Xiaobo.However,we can not ignore that in the context of consumer culture,Wang Xiaobo gradually moved towards symbolization and labeling.Wang xiaobo’s works,though widely recognized for crossing the line between elegance and vulgarity,serve as a foil to his image as a "liberal" and spokesperson for the middle class.In fact,the definition of Wang Xiaobo’s "liberalism" by liberal scholars is different from that of Wang Xiaobo himself.Wang Xiaobo went out of the system not to free himself from power and practice liberalism as liberals said,but simply for literary creation.The practice of "liberalism" against power is reflected in his novel creation,but liberals pay little attention to his novel works.Is also opposed to power,is different from liberalism,based on the free market economy and on political power,wang spirit of liberalism is based on the individual level,from the "wisdom","sex" and "interesting" three dimensions,expressed the highly centralized political system of the rebellion,he also will be the one dimension to rise to the construction of social ethics.However,this expression also reflects the limitations of Wang Xiaobo’s liberalism.First of all,he has the middle class interest and the enlightenment attitude of elite intellectuals.The equal communication he talks about is not equal,and the masses he talks about are not the masses in the real sense.Secondly,like the word "freedom",the three themes proposed by Wang Xiaobo are ambiguous and multi-explanatory,with weak operability and easy to produce ambiguity and distortion.