Description
Through a digital queer Marxist lens, this paper studies the complex digital material conditions around queer media representation in China today against a background of stringent censorship and state-led promotion of heterosexist-nationalist ideologies. It unpacks firstly, how queer vlogs on Bilibili.com, a Chinese equivalent of YouTube, use stereotypes as a gateway to visibility. Moreover, by constructing an online persona that performs a camp style with Chinese characteristics, these vlogs, though mediated by commercial platforms, constitute resistance against both the erasure of queer visibility and hetero- and homo- normative ideals. Employing multi-modal critical visual methods including semiotics, discourse, genre and compositional analysis, this paper also sheds light on how, in doing so, these queer vlogs perform queer politics and bottom-up digital activism in non-aggressive, non-violent, individual and creative ways. The paper proposes a more nuanced approach toward queer visibility and queer politics in visual culture in the age of platform capitalism and in a society where formal social activism protests are prohibited under the ideological promotion of “social harmony” and “positive energy”.
