Study On The Works Of Wang Hailing In The Context Of Consumption Culture

The rapid invasion, diffusion and population of consumption culture is one of themost important characterizations of China in1990s, the foundation of literaturethereupon changed correspondingly. In this context, Wang Hailing made eye-catchingachievements in literary creation, and consequently, research results on Wang’s worksarose. However, a main limitation of narrow vision existed in these research results.Most research were carried out from visions of case study, moral criticism,psychoanalysis, structural analysis, culture psychological criticism, and popularculture criticism, etc. In this thesis, integrated with the context of consumption culture,standing on sociology, communication science and cultural ethics, research wascarried out based on the love and marriage novels of Wang Hailing and how they wereaccepted by the market; at the same time, the secret confrontation implying in Wang’screation to meet the market was dig out. The research results will guide the creation ofother writers and provide experience to them.To speak in detail, the characterizations of consumption culture and develop-ment of literature in this context were described in the exordium part. In Chapter1,the popular culture standpoint of Wang Hailing’s love and marriage novels wasanalyzed and confirmed from aspects of image appeal, family ethics narrative andmiddle class classy. Among them, the middle-class taste related to meet the masspsychology of compensatory levels. In Chapter2, the creation strategy adopted byWang was discussed; in the first of the three sections in Chapter2, the popularviewpoint of Wang, which meets the psychological demands of the mass by coveringboth marriage and cities, was analyzed; in the second section, the spiritual connotationof the novels was analyzed from the text level; Wang’s works contains both moderntastes of the mass and common people feeling of the tradition, that is to say, it bothpursues the subjectivity of individual life and shows the true feeling warmly rooted inthe Chinese traditional culture; in the third section, the secret confrontation implied inher works was discussed: she is not confined just to meeting the market, but she sticksto her own literature ideal; Her attitude of creation is pursued by the mass and winsthe favor of cultural elites, which is recognized as a kind of win-win strategy. InChapter3, the market operation of Wang’s love and marriage novels was analyzed.The first section of this chapter was created in the name of ‘individual life experience’,pointing out the attraction to the market of literature with a characterization ofautobiography; the driving force of mass media was discussed in the second section,from aspects of new media campaign, audio-visual promotion and book marketing.The limitations of Wang’s works are discussed in Chapter4. Although Wang has metthe demands of literature from the mass both in novel contents and market operation,there are still some shortcomings in Wang’s works, such as stereotype in writing, excessive interference and contradiction in intension, misleading in the thoughtconveyed. These drawbacks contributed to the immaturity of Wang’s creation. Thelimitations and experience of Wang’s works are finally summarized.