Stories of New Generations and Social Justice

This chapter examines two widely popular television drama series in addition to the case of Super Girl, Dwelling Narrowness and Naked Wedding. Their titles joined a list of newly coined terms in the first decade of the twenty-first century to describe new life situations experienced by China’s young generations. On the one hand, China is suffering from enlarging wealth gaps, prevalent resentment held by ordinary citizens toward the rich, and lack of public trust in social justice. On the other hand, audience discussions about the dramas exhibited moral ambiguities. While viewers expressed deep-seated anger toward harsh consequences of China’s postsocialist developments, they also revealed sympathy toward the characters that are corrupt public officials and envy for people who take shortcuts to privileges. Such contradictions are emblematic of the despair with a lack of social mobility in contemporary China. Discussions of Super Girl echoed such sentiments. The public showed their mistrust toward the producers as suspect manipulators on the show. Newspaper contributors and online discussants alike composed an overarching thesis about today’s Chinese society and voiced genuine concerns that it is drifting away from valuing true talents, most disturbingly by such cultural institutions as TV networks. Furthermore, the public speculated and researched about the contestants’ family wealth and connections in making sense of their success on Super Girl. Overall, entertainment materials provided a platform for the viewers to voice their cynicism about frequent violations of social justice by the new rich in China and the monopoly they hold over life opportunities.