Cosmopolitanism with Chinese Characteristics: Transnational Male Images in Chinese TV Dramas

Abstract

This chapter analyzes a group of male images in Chinese television dramas of recent years and examines how national identity is constructed through negotiation of the meaning of gender. These images, such as white-collar elite in transnational corporations, returnees from overseas and Chinese businessmen in foreign countries, show a conspicuous desire to represent Chinese men in a cosmopolitan fashion and to link masculinity with modernity. Another venue for the performance of cosmopolitan masculinity is some foreign locale. Dramas depicting the lives of overseas Chinese, including students, tourists, new immigrants and merchants, have become increasingly popular in recent years. The paper examines how these transnational male images exhibit hybridity and negotiation between global and local discourses of masculinity and how this cosmopolitan masculinity squares with the state’s agenda of building a modern and cosmopolitan image of the country and, in particular, its educated younger elite.