Product placement with ‘Chinese characteristics’: Feng Xiaogang's films and Go Lala Go!

Abstract

This study examines the practice of product placement (or ‘soft advertisement’/ruanxing guanggao) in Chinese cinema in order to create an understanding of the specific realities of film production and consumption. The return of consumer culture, instead of nostalgically recreating the ruined socialist past, engenders the imaginary of a ‘brand’ new China of the global future. Commercialization of film and television exploits the emerging practice of product placement as economic necessity and a reflection of the urban consumer culture. The director Feng Xiaogang, encouraged by the private film company Huayi Brothers, exemplifies the integration of product placement in a series of high-budget box-office hits. Feng's films, Feichang wurao/If You are the One (2008) and its sequel (2010), successfully merge the narratives surrounding the new urban middle class and their conspicuous consumption in China and abroad. Adapted from a popular ‘workplace’ novel, Du Lala shengzhi ji/The Promotion of Du Lala (2007), Xu Jinglei's Go Lala Go! (2010), a chick flick aimed at white-collar women, places products including luxury cars, apartments, personal goods, fashion items and laptops, while downplaying office politics in favour of love and consumption as its main tropes. Through examining product placement in Feng's films and Go Lala Go!, this study analyses why twenty-first-century Chinese cinema merges entertainment and commercial culture, and how the practice reflects the emergence of consumer culture in China and the specificity of the use of product placement in Chinese cinema.

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Daria Berg, University of St Gallen, Switzerland, for comments on the initial idea for this topic. Any mistakes contained herein are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Thorstein Veblen (1899) defines the notion ‘conspicuous consumption’ in Theory of the Leisure Class as the way that the wealthy display the fact that they are wealthy, that they have access to fashion and taste but do not have to work.

2. All figures given at the exchange rate of 1 RMB= $0.16, as of October 2012.

3. http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=2242&catid=7&subcatid=43. Accessed 3 January 2013.

4. The total profit was approximately $10 million (62.7 million RMB) in 2010 (The Mirriad 2012).

5. For instance, from February 2011, regulations on product placement on UK television were relaxed but subject to principles such as editorial independence and control over programming, and distinction between editorial content and advertising. http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/commercial-references-television/. Accessed 10 June 2012.

6. http://www.novexcn.com/advert_law_95.html. Accessed 10 June 2012.

7. ‘Intertextuality […] foregrounds notions of relationality, interconnectedness and interdependence in modern cultural life’ (Allen 2000, 5).

8. http://www.screendaily.com/fengs-if-you-are-the-one-smashes-box-office-records/4042529.article. Accessed 2 June 2013.

9. http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/indepth/cultural/pilgrimage/ifyouaretheone.html. Accessed 5 July 2013.

10. The company has an unwritten policy that personal relationships at work usually result in one of the parties resigning from the company.

11. The novels Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding, 1996) and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Helen Fielding, 1999) have been adapted as films (Sharon Maguire, 2001; Beeban Kidron, 2004). ‘Ally McBeal’ was an American television series (1997–2002). ‘Sex and the City,’ based on a novel (Candice Bushnell, 1997), was an American television series produced by HBO (1998–2004) and adapted as two films (Michael Patrick King, 2008; 2010).

12. Dan, shortened from huadan, is the main female role in Chinese opera, which continues to be used to describe actresses in the performance arts. Xu's blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/xujinglei) began in 2005 and as of September 2014, it had 312, 843, 000 hits. However, Xu has not posted on this Sina site since November 2010.

13. See http://kaila.com.cn/kaila. The magazine is defunct, as of September 2014.

14. http://www-us.dmg-entertainment.com/. Accessed 2 May 2012.

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Leung Wing-Fai

Leung Wing-Fai is a lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies and head of Asian Studies at the University College Cork, Ireland. She completed her doctoral degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her publications include the monograph Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity (Routledge 2014). She has co-edited East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (2008), and East Asian Film Stars (2014). Her articles have appeared in Asian Ethnicity, Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Journal of Asian Cinema and Film International.