Pan Documentary and the Ecologies of Reality Production in Contemporary China

Abstract

Under the increasingly fundamental situation where our entanglement with media has denied our access to objective realities and detached reflections, how is documentary making possible? And what does it mean for understanding the “realities” being produced and experienced in China today? To address these questions, this dissertation examines what I call “pan documentary,” an expanding topography of documentary that covers a wide range of media forms, practices, and artifacts with a shared claim to the real. Going beyond existing scholarly preoccupation with Chinese dissident and arthouse documentary films, it brings in more industrialized, popular forms which entail a reconsideration of what documentary is/can be. Moreover, it draws attention to their radically transformative impact on the status of reality making during a period when the Chinese government’s tightening grip on mass media overlaps with the popularization of new media technologies and platforms that affect how we engage with realities. Overall, with first-hand fieldwork in Chinese media industries, I map out a “pan documentary ecology” which is constituted by myriad human agents, institutions, technologies, industrial systems, discourses, and ideologies. I argue that the dynamic entanglement of these social and structural actors has shaped the making of realities, while at the same time they have also negotiated, adapted, or even reconfigured themselves. I also demonstrate how this “pan documentary ecology” has made possible a mediated “super vision” that renders hidden tensions and phantom realities visible despite the state’s pervading supervision of media. The main body of this dissertation consists of four chapters, each taking up one specific “pan documentary” form and closely examine its production of realities enabled by an ecology of players and forces. Looking at the transformation of Chinese independent documentary scene, Chapter One discusses the rise of what I call “chaotic realism,” a product of and a tactical response to the need of balancing creative agency, ethical dilemma, industrial demand, and state censorship. Chapter Two investigates how “mainstream documentaries” are made possible by distributed authoring agencies among participatory actors both on- and off-screen, thereby accommodating conflicting interests and imaginings. Turning to Chinese reality TV, Chapter Three shows that this feral genre, developing within a constellation of opposing forces such as globalization, liberal subjecthood, nationalism ideology, and state’s media control, can dramatize them into entertaining, digestible realities on screen. Zooming in on the “awkward dance” craze over livestreaming platforms, Chapter Four elucidates how grassroots streamers’ gimmicky, earthy performances leverage the platform mechanism for maximum attention and profit while further lubricating the capitalist wheel and consolidating the exploitation of relations. Finally, the conclusion offers a brief discussion of media “super vision” vis-à-vis state supervision.