Rewind and recollect: Activating dormant memories and politics in Teresa Teng’s music videos uploaded on YouTube

Abstract

Posted mostly by consumers rather than industry players, music videos on video-sharing websites like YouTube have been instrumental in expanding the circulation of audio-visual materials in cyberspace. In transnational Chinese pop music, with shared memories engendered by viewers’ nostalgic comments on clips, particularly the older ones, uploads promise the possibilities of transcending existing geopolitical divides between Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora. However, as evinced in this case study of video clips featuring prominent Taiwanese female singer Teresa Teng, the uploaders are divided between advocates for a ‘Greater China’ and detractors seeking a more indigenised Taiwanese identity. Analysis of some of Teng’s more politically contentious music videos in the highly networked and circulatory media context, this article advocates looking beyond the immediate sensory audio-projections of the music videos to better understand them as historical and ideological texts. To engage with the posted texts, a set of cultural literacies, including prior historical awareness of the posted music video as well as the geo-cultural contexts of the multilingual and gendered responses in the viewers’ comments, is needed. Placed on the seemingly more open platform of YouTube, Teng’s music videos have become part of the broader attempts of her viewers to re-appropriate and re-territorialise her legacy according to new cultural imaginations and desires.