'Lost Lambs': Rock, gender, authenticity, and a generational response to modernity in the People's Republic of China

This dissertation explores rock as a site where modern identities are created in the People's Republic of China ("PRC"). Based on field research conducted between the summers of 1996 and 1999, I examine how rock is used by a generation of urban youth to negotiate issues of identity and self-presentation. The population studied consists of the pioneer rockers that encountered Western rock in the 1980s and have continued to explore it as a meaningful form of expressive culture. This generation was born in the midst of the political fervor of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966--1976) and came of age in its aftermath (late 1970s and early 1980s), during the initial period of economic reforms---coming of age in between two major historical moments that produced conflicting messages about individuality, sexuality, and personal, cultural, and gendered identities.; This project is based on the premise that the PRC is undergoing its own unique experience of modernity and that rock, as a form of local cultural production, can provide insights into the particular manifestation of modernity that is taking place there. Drawing on the concept of "alternative modernities," I posit that, even though rock is an imported cultural form, its development in the PRC can be seen as following its own trajectory guided by the unique confluence of factors within its social environment. I illustrate that while the local discourse on rock authenticity seems mostly reiterative of the Western discourse on rock authenticity, the rockers' criticisms about the prevailing "falseness" and "hypocrisy" in their local environment provided the stronger impetus for authenticity as a guiding principle for creative expression and for the basis of a community. The subsequent chapters are case studies of two bands, Tang Dynasty and Cobra, focusing the discussion on issues of gender and cultural identity. The first explores the construction of an idealized Chinese masculinity through heavy metal performance, while the latter examines an all-women rock band's critical engagement with contemporary feminine ideals and expectations in China's modernity.