Countering political enchantments in digital China: With reference to the fan-remix Meeting Sheldon

ABSTRACT

Despite growing scholarly interest in fan audiovisual translation, how fan translators exploit fictional content for online protests of real-world issues has not been thoroughly explored in the literature. This article examines the fan-driven metamorphosis of the US sitcom The Big Bang Theory in the Chinese online space, focusing on the fan-remix “Meeting Sheldon”, produced by the China-based fandubbing group Y Show Club amidst online protests against the original show’s official ban in China. Y Show Club paired audiovisual clips from the original series with newly dubbed tracks and subtitles in Mandarin and English. In doing so, they combined new content and the original sitcom characters at the intersection between fiction and reality to reimagine the present and future within the state apparatus of political enchantments.

KEYWORDS:

• Translational fandom
• political enchantment
• Digital China
• imaginary futures
• remix
• TBBT
• fan activism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-jails-citizen-journalist-for-four-years-for-wuhan-reports-20201228-p56qid.html (accessed on 7 January 2021),

2 The video is now available on YouTube via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3SJfjWJmCs, and on the Chinese streaming platform Bilibili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av1101916/ (accessed on June 10, 2020).

3 This English translation is included in the Situationalist International Anthology. This and other works on détournement can be found on the Bureau of Public Secrets website: http://www.bopsecrets.org/

4 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUXPUCjkujY (in Chinese; accessed on May 30, 2021).

5 https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page (accessed on March 11, 2021).

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dingkun Wang

Dingkun Wang is an assistant professor in translation at the University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China. His primary research interests are fan translation in digital media and Chinese-language subtitling. Other areas of interest include Asian cinemas and transmedia storytelling.