Popular Culture Against Postmodernism

The aim of this research is to make clear what the characteristics of popularculture are and, more significantly, in the particular Chinese social and culturalcontext, how the Chinese popular culture is different from that of the western popularculture. To achieve this goal, the author of this thesis is trying to approach the newlyprospering star-making TV programs by employing Bakhtin's carnivalesque theoryagainst the background of postmodernism. The star-making TV programs, such as"Super Girls", are used for analysis.When the world history entered the latter half of the 20th century, popularculture started to take the place of high culture as the mainstream culture of thewestern world with the appearance of postmodernism. In China, postmodernismplays the same role in legalizing popular culture. Since the beginning of the 1990s, China has had more communication with the world, thus postmodernism has beengradually accepted by Chinese people. Under the influence of its spirits such asanti-centre and anti-hero, Chinese popular culture has taken the place of the elitistculture, which was worshipped all the time by the Chinese intellectuals before the1990s. Like the western popular culture, Chinese popular culture has thecharacteristics of entertaining, equality, participation and commerciality. However, they are not the whole story of Chinese popular culture. Because of the socialistsystem, Chinese popular culture is for the enjoyment of most of the people; becauseof the agricultural tradition, Chinese popular culture is shown in a much moretraditional way than that of the western world. The study of western postmodernist thinking and the theories and practices ofthe western popular culture can give us much valuable enlightenment for thedevelopment of Chinese culture. However, we have to make it clear that theaccomplishments of Chinese modernization career should be based on the particularChinese social and cultural conditions.