{"title":"De-celebrifying the problematic wanghong: Interlocking tensions in Chinese digital anti-fandom","authors":"Xinying Yang","doi":"10.1177/13678779241260842","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The deconstruction of celebrity persona reflects public concerns within rapidly changing societies. Bringing perspectives from de-legitimation and anti-fandom, this paper investigates how Wanwan, a controversial Chinese Internet celebrity (wanghong), was de-celebrified as a bragger, sugar baby, and two-faced traitor by her anti-fans. Anti-fans condemned Wanwan for her self-glorification, sex trading for material goods, and immorality as an elite. Despite demonstrating anti-fan efforts to seek representative justice online, their discourses are problematic for bolstering classist, neoliberal feminist, populist, and moral perfectionist ideologies. A more serious concern pertains to the politicization of personal animosity through de-celebrification, wherein anti-fans try to exploit state power to cancel the celebrities they dislike. In addition to validating a discursive approach that fleshes out (de-)celebrification studies, this paper refines our understanding of the politics of dislike by unraveling the complex socio-political dynamics behind anti-fandom and de-celebrification.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241260842","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The deconstruction of celebrity persona reflects public concerns within rapidly changing societies. Bringing perspectives from de-legitimation and anti-fandom, this paper investigates how Wanwan, a controversial Chinese Internet celebrity (wanghong), was de-celebrified as a bragger, sugar baby, and two-faced traitor by her anti-fans. Anti-fans condemned Wanwan for her self-glorification, sex trading for material goods, and immorality as an elite. Despite demonstrating anti-fan efforts to seek representative justice online, their discourses are problematic for bolstering classist, neoliberal feminist, populist, and moral perfectionist ideologies. A more serious concern pertains to the politicization of personal animosity through de-celebrification, wherein anti-fans try to exploit state power to cancel the celebrities they dislike. In addition to validating a discursive approach that fleshes out (de-)celebrification studies, this paper refines our understanding of the politics of dislike by unraveling the complex socio-political dynamics behind anti-fandom and de-celebrification.
期刊介绍：
International Journal of Cultural Studies is committed to rethinking cultural practices, processes, texts and infrastructures beyond traditional national frameworks and regional biases. The journal publishes theoretical, empirical and historical analyses that interrogate what culture means, and what culture does, across global and local scales of power and action, diverse technologies and forms of mediation, and multiple dimensions of performance, experience and identity. Dedicated to theoretical and methodological innovation in cultural research, the journal is multidisciplinary in outlook, publishing relevant contributions that integrate approaches from the social sciences, humanities, information sciences and more. International Journal of Cultural Studies publishes original research articles. The journal gives preference to papers that extend existing theory or generate new theory through interpretive engagement with empirical cases. Papers based on single country case-studies should clearly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses for an international readership. The journal does not publish close readings of single texts; but it does consider critical, contextualised readings that similarly indicate and develop the broader relevance of their analyses to the field. International Journal of Cultural Studies regularly publishes special issues on urgent questions in the field as well as on specific regions, industries and practices.
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