From Mao Zedong to Michael Jackson: Revisualizing culture and history in the YouTube age

Abstract

There is an array of mash-up videos on YouTube, and its Chinese equivalent Tudou, that use visual footage from a Cultural Revolution performance with pop music soundtracks ranging from Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ to the rap song ‘Ninja’ by Jay Chou, a Taiwanese Mandopop star. In merging temporal and regional sights and sounds in this manner, these videos playfully remap history and the contemporary moment. At first glance the commentary posted to these videos seems like little more than unreflexive praise or unrelated venting. Yet comparing the conversations that take place on YouTube and Tudou reveals a good deal about the cultural and historical understandings of the people making the comments. In the following pages I will analyse these mash-ups and their posted commentary on YouTube and Tudou. In combination they create a dialogue that frequently aligns with regionally bound understandings of culture, politics, and history, even as they undermine that sense of local unity with their dissent. The Chinese-language videos and posted commentary also work to undermine commonly held assumptions that YouTube is a Western domain, forcing us to question our views of cultural centres and peripheries, both globally and in Chinese-speaking Asia.