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Most recent post in Mobile phone and wireless
The text message as satirePosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 2, 2008 3:48 PM
This article was contributed by Iacob Koch-Weser. With over 500 million users and counting, the cell phone has become the sine qua non of social life in contemporary China. Unlike the car, the Internet, and the café, its influence extends beyond the bourgeois elements of major cities, suffusing the social fabric of center and periphery, urban and rural, and wealthy and poor alike. In a sense, the country is swimming with the tide of globalization - it comes as no surprise that the Chinese media has loudly applauded Raul Castro’s permission of cell phone use in Cuba, an “opening up” policy that provokes some nostalgic reflection on China’s recent past. Yet what sets the cell phone medium apart on the Mainland is the prominence of the written over the spoken. The text message has taken on a Chinese life of its own, imbued with what Marcel Granet once called the “cosmo-magical effect” of the character. In recent weeks, the wildfire proliferation of “Boycott Carrefour!” messages has provided new evidence of this; people in the remotest hinterlands where mobilized to support the boycott, even though they had never shopped at Carrefour or come across a Frenchman. The speed and scale exceeded even the Japanophobe messages of spring 2005. More intriguing, however, is the growing popularity of satirical text messages. These texts crystallize the power of the vox populi: the age-old craft of catchy verse, combined with the earthy humor of the disempowered cynic. Two messages circulated widely in recent weeks illustrate this point. Circulated on May 1st, the first message sets out to prove that “nobody can mess with China”. It concludes with an appeal to boycott Carrefour over the May 1st holidays. Yet the bulk of the text reads more like a scathing satire of Chinese society (original Chinese at bottom of post):
It is hard to tell whether the author is truly proud of China and in support of the boycott, or is in fact ridiculing patriotic fervor because it obscures domestic issues, such as poor infrastructure, rampant crime, and strong-armed governance. The satire genre leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Sent around in early March, the second text message disparages the blatant discrepancy between words and deeds in China today. Many Chinese (by implication, mainly middle-aged men in cities) berate the “wicked” social habits that they themselves partake in:
This message — albeit vulgar and crass in tone — conveys the anomie of urban life in 21st Century China. To most readers, the onslaught of parallel sentences simply provides a good laugh over dinner or during a long commute home. After all, the desire for mirthful catharsis is universal, and there is nothing like Seinfeld or Letterman on the Mainland to do the job (and what’s more, contemporary xiangsheng performers don’t nearly match the laugh factor of their predecessors, see this article on Danwei). Beyond that, however, these messages can enrich our understanding of the Chinese zeitgeist. As postmodern literary studies focus increasingly on the production and consumption of low-brow materials, the text message deserves its rightful place in the field. (Original Chinese messages below.) Continue reading "The text message as satire" »
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