In present-day China, celebrity figures such as film stars, famous TV personalities, popular blog writers, politicians, sports people and an assortment of Internet luminary, attract increasing attention from both the media and the public. The public are interested in reading any news about celebrities and especially about their careers and their personal life. The Chinese paparazzi wait for days outside the apartment building of film or TV stars just for a quick photo of those who are seen leaving after an overnight stay at the film starâs home. Their âsurveillanceâ enables them to gain personal insights into celebrityâs private lives and this information is invaluable and well-paid for by mainstream and tabloid entertainment media outlets. The consumption of celebrity constitutes a great part of the everyday cultural life of the contemporary Chinese people as they indulge themselves in browsing social and entertainment news.
In the West, celebrity studies have emerged from a marginalized research discipline to a more-centred academic zone. Since the publication of the first edition of Stars back in 1979, the go-to book in the field of celebrity studies authored by Richard Dyer, many other authors have contributed to the growth of this (once) second-tier research discipline. These new contributors include David Marshallâ Celebrity and Power: Fame and Contemporary Culture (1997); Graeme Turnerâs Understanding Celebrity (2004); Richard Dyerâs Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (2003); and Framing Celebrity: New Directions in Celebrity Culture, edited by Su Holmes and Sean Redmond (2006); and In the Limelight and Under the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity, edited by Diane Negra and Su Holmes (2011). Furthermore, the publication of the high profile journal, Celebrity Studies, has since 2010 become a milestone achievement in the research field of celebrity studies. In 2019, the chief editor of Celebrity Studies, Professor Sean Redmond and his colleagues will organize a conference on Asian stardom and celebrity and will dedicate a special issue of the journal to proceedings of this conference. In 2014, Palgrave Macmillan published an edited volume entitled East Asian Film Stars. Furthermore, in 2010, Hong Kong University Press published an edited volume entitled Celebrity in China which has a more specific focus on research findings on the development of the Chinese celebrity phenomena and culture. Shenshen Caiâs Contemporary Chinese Films and Celebrity Directors was released by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017 and this work furthers the study on Chinese celebrities in the West. It seems that scholars and publishers in the West are getting more interested in the studies and research about Asian stardom and celebrity cultures.
Though Chinese celebrity studies in particular and Asian celebrity studies in general have been attracting more attention from the Western media and cultural studies scholars, there still lacks a focus on Chinese female stardom and celebrity figures. This edited volume fills this gap and examines a group of Chinese female celebrity figures, their career accomplishments, social and cultural influence, and in some cases personal lifestyle choices, and tendencies.
Over the last decade or so, Chinese female celebrities were mostly discussed and examined in relation with their works, such as in Women Writers in Postsocialist China, co-authored by Kay Schaffer and Xianlin Song and published by Routledge in 2014; Chinese Womenâs Cinema: Transnational Contexts, an edited volume by Lingzhen Wang and published by Columbia University Press in 2011; and Women Through the Lens: Gender and Nation in a Century of Chinese Cinema penned by Shuqin Cui and was released by the University of Hawaii Press in 2003. Adopting a gendered perspective, these texts explore a group of modern and contemporary Chinese female writersâ and directorsâ works and examine those inherent and nuanced associations between these female celebrity figures and their literary or cinematic creations, by focusing more on their works rather than on those female celebrity themselves.
I concur with Su Holmes and Diane Negra (2011, p. 13) that âwhile stardom has long since been conceptualized as requiring an interaction between on-/off-screen selves (âworkâ self and âprivateâ self), celebrity is often deemed to connote a representational structure in which the primary emphasis is on the personâs âprivateâ life or lifestyleââ. Therefore, adopting a different perspective and approach, this edited volume concentrates more on a group of contemporary Chinese female celebrity figures, their professional achievements, their public image and social influence, and the intersection and interaction of all these facets. Gender-related issues and considerations are certainly interwoven into the discussion of this book though they are not the distinct feature of the book.
The female celebrity figures that are under examination in this volume are mainly from mainland China, only one of them is based on Taiwan. Therefore, their experiences are representative in reflecting the case of contemporary Chinese mainland female celebrities. The group of female celebrity covered in this book is also representative as it compasses politician, journalist, director, writer, actor, businessperson and Internet-related celebrity. The discussions in the book revolve around three themes: (1) Chinese female celebrityâs experiences that are woven into the tapestry of the socio-political, economic and cultural vicissitudes and makeovers of contemporary China; (2) Chinese female celebrity as public figure and cultural icon that embodies topical, controversial and sensitive social events and phenomena; and (3) Chinese female celebrities who fill the role of social and cultural activist who have an impact on socio-cultural debates and civil issues and movements. In part, this edited volume carries on the tradition of celebrity studies that was pioneered by Richard Dyer and which âsituated the analysis of stars in the realm of ideology and representation. Star âimagesâ could be understood as semiotic âsignâ and read as âtextsââdramatizing ideas of personhood, individualism, and class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality at any one timeâ. In addition, this edited book furthers the study of Richard Dyerâs Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (2003), which âwent on to offer a detailed conceptual framework for contextualizing the star image; situating it within the myriad of cultural, historical and social discourses from which it emergedâ (Holmes and Negra 2011, p. 12). The three themes mentioned above are mapped out in the following sections.
Chinese Female CelebrityâWitnessing Contemporary Chinaâs Changes and Progress
As David Marshall (2006, p. v6 cited in Su and Redmond 2010, p. 5) notes, âAs phenomena, celebrities intersect with a remarkable array of political, cultural and economic activities to a threshold point that it is worth identifying the operation of a celebrity culture embedded in national and transnational culturesâ. One focus of this edited volume lays in its examination of the interwoven and interactive connections between contemporary Chinese female celebrityâs career trajectory and individual attainment and the transformations and encroachment of the contemporary Chinese nation and society. Besides being successful women and influential public figures, this group of contemporary Chinese female celebrities that are under examination of this book serve as microcosms of their respective times in the recent history of the Chinese nation and society.
In the case of actress-producer-entrepreneur Liu Xiaoqing (b. 1951), her fulfilment as Chinaâs best actress and an exemplar female entrepreneur serve as a lens through which many economic, social and cultural renovations of contemporary China have been showcased. For example: during the Opening Up period, Chinaâs film stars and TV serial actors became the first tier of individuals who were able to free themselves from the restraints of their work units and a planned economy as they explored ways of money making in various kinds of self-employment and private business opportunities provided by a fledgling market economy experiment. In the socio-cultural field, Liu Xiaoqingâs preference of career and personal achievement over family life and her views on marriage revamped the traditional Confucian ideals of a good Chinese woman and the socialist revolutionary remodelling of contemporary Chinese females. Liu Xiaoqingâs case also verifies what Su Holmes and Diane Negra (2011, p. 2) has pointed out in their co-edited book In the Limelight and Under the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity that the female celebritiesâ âhard-won achievements will collapse under the simultaneous weight of relationships, family, and career. One reason why stories of professionally accomplished/personally troubled female celebrities circulate so actively is that when women struggle or fail, their actions are seen to constitute âproofâ that for women the âwork-life balanceâ is really an impossible oneâ. In this sense, Liu Xiaoqingâs case showcases âfemale celebrityâs role in testing dominant social normsâ (Holmes and Negra 2011, p. 3).
Hong Huang (b. 1961), granddaughter of Zhang Shizhao (b. 1881), a Republican era politician and educator, and ex-wife of one of contemporary Chinaâs most famous directors Chen Kaige (b. 1952) enjoyed a âcelebrityâ status from her teenage years. As a member of the first group of Chinese teenagers who were sent to study in America when the Sino-American relationship started to gradually thaw, Hong Huangâs life journey veered of its intended trajectory. Hong Huangâs personality, concepts about marriage, behaviour mode and values were branded with an obvious American mark, which caused her to being called a âhighbornâ ruffian when she returned to China to live and work. Due to her American education experience and her illustrious family background, Hong Huang worked as a chief representative of a foreign company, where she managed the business in China and joined Chinaâs nouveau riche social echelon when she was still in her middle twenties. Later, similar to Liu Xiaoqing, Hong Huang plunged into the business world and established her own media company and became a CEO, which adds in an extra layer to her celebrity stature that is a female entrepreneur. In this sense, Hong Huangâs life journey overlapped with many major political, economic and socio-cultural renovations of contemporary China.
Peng Xiaolian (b. 1953), another famous Chinese Fifth Generation director, spent her teenage years in Chinaâs countryside as a sent-down youth during the chaotic Cultural Revolution times. She was admitted into the Department of Directing at the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 when the university entrance exam was resumed after more than a decade after the Cultural Revolution. Some of Peng Xiaolianâs documentary and cinematic works reflects the encounters and suffering of her generation during the tumultuous and challenging socialist revolutionary and post-Opening Up years, through which we seem to see the film auteurâs interlocution with the times during which she grew up and matured.
The famous post-1970s writer-director-actor Xu Jinglei (b. 1974) is also an unavoidable figure when we examine Chinese female celebrities and the era in which they grow up in. Xu Jingleiâs success owes a lot to the contemporary Chinese society that is more and more accommodating to individuality and independent character when compared to a social backdrop before the economic makeovers and cultural assimilations towards the West. Xu Jingleiâs blog entries enjoyed enormous popularity and she became an âovernight internet celebrityâ. Xu Jinglei is widely recognized as the number one gifted female in the mainland region and her talent showcased in writing and directing have garnered her vast media attention and created a loyal fan base. Xuâs emergence and the fame she enjoys as a blog writer has heralded and witnessed Chinaâs explosion of ideas and opinions that are circulated on the Internet and social media platforms, which has a potential to change the agenda of discussions and debates over civil issues, public concerns, or even political subjects among the Chinese netizens.
Chinese Female CelebrityâCultural Icon and Signifier of Social Trend
Graeme Turner concurred with other scholars when he wrote that celebrity is âunderstood as an important social process through which relationships, identity, and social and cultural norms are debated, evaluated, modified, and sharedâ (Hermes 1995; Turner et al. 2000 cited in Turner 2004, p. 24). Although based in Taiwan, the singer-actor-writer-director Rene Liu (Liu Ruoying, b. 1970) has become the signifier of the left-over woman social trend/stigma that has been emerged in the mainland area. Rene Liu married when she was 41 years old, however, those shelved ladies characters she performs in her songs, TV and film works have become her signature public image that attracts her dedicated fans who are mainly middle-class white-collar females, literary young woman and middle-aged shelved ladies. Liuâs archetypal media persona as a left-over woman shapes our understanding of celebrity as a formidable discursive dynamism in the vibrant socio-cultural domain. In the extremely developed culture and entertainment market of China, the worship of celebrities has an apparent social purpose in terms of fashioning contemporary forms of identity and community. Serving as prototypes of persona, celebrities wield massive impact over their fan cohorts. In recent years, Chinese state-run media has kindled intense discussion about the left-over women who are often described as covetous and supercilious. Utilizing the sophisticated, attractive and intellectual urban single women persona created in her songs, screen roles and biographical and creative writing, Liu demonstrates how celebrity culture functions as a prevailing discursive power in challenging this state-led propaganda. In contrast to those scripted and inflated descriptions the state institutions attributed to the âleft-overâ females, Liuâs public image as a cordial, striking and prosperous professional single woman is contrary to the adverse interpretation of this group in the state media and entertainment oratory. Through this favourable overhaul of the âleft-overâ woman image, Liu successfully propagates her celebrity status as a typical and profitable cultural signifier.
Similar to Rene Liu, Xu Jingleiâs has successfully built her public image as a talented and âstrongâ woman. As a legendary Chinese actor-writer-director and was Chinaâs number one bl...