'More coming out, bigger market': Queer visibility and queer subjectivity in the Chinese pink market. (1st September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huang, Shuzhen; Wong, Terrie Siang-Ting
• Is Part Of: Queer studies in media & popular culture. Volume 4:Number 3(2019)
• Page Start: 287
• Page End: 302
• Publication Date: 2019-09-01
• Subjects: Gender identity in mass media -- Research -- Periodicals; Gays in popular culture -- Research -- Periodicals; Gays in motion pictures -- Research -- Periodicals; Homosexuality in motion pictures -- Research -- Periodicals; 305.3
• DOI: 10.1386/qsmpc_00013_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2055-5695

Abstract

AbstractThe transnational circulation of Euro-American queer discourse affects queer subjectivity in local contexts. Through a case study of the Rainbow Love wedding competition, this article unravels the interplay between transnational queer politics, queer affect and the economy of visibility in the emerging pink market to explore how they shape the queer landscape in mainland China. Rainbow Love demonstrates how recent queer visibility in Chinese media manifests as a narrative commodity that is embedded in consumerism and in colonialist sexual discourse. By exploiting post-Cold War anxiety in mainland China, Rainbow Love invites affective identification and produces an 'ideal' queer subjectivity in the Chinese pink market: cosmopolitan, mobile and middle-class queers who desire and can afford luxury consumption. We argue that such queer visibility in the Chinese pink market has become a regulatory force on Chinese queer subjects despite the liberatory narratives that are advocated in the mass media.