港大中文學院

2022/23 School of Chinese Research Student Seminar

Dangerous Pleasures: Archiving and Queering “Women” in Nisu Bots

危險的愉悅：泥塑 bot 中的檔案、女性性與酷兒性

Speaker: Miss CHOW Chung Yan, Norah

Date & Time: November 4, 2022 (Wed) 5:30-6:45pm

Venue: CPD-3.29, Central Podium Level 3, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Language: English

Mode of Delivery: 100% Face-to-face

Women and sexual minorities’ pleasures not only assume agency but often reveal new forms of risks, and nisu bots’ struggles between 2018-2021 offer a window into this question in the Chinese context. As a neologism in today’s Chinese cyberculture, “nisu” (literarily “clay-molding”) is a practice through which the images of male idols could be translated into literary symbols of “femininity,” such as “mommy,” “wife,” and “daughter.” Standing for “robot,” “bot” is a human-administered and thematic contribution-based account based on Sina Weibo, one of the social media platform superpowers in the PRC. This study understands nisu bots both as constructed sites and archival entities. Through a queer lens, I examine the power struggles in nisu bots between 2018-2021 at the intersection of fan culture, subculture, and women-oriented culture. In securing their stigmatized pleasures of nisu, nisu bots opening in 2018 challenged the organizational hegemony of fandoms from the margins. In this process, nisu bots transformed into symbolic sites of resistance, reshaping “nisu fan” as a minority identity. At the same time, nisu bots’ crises were mediated by the censorship of erotic writings and the undervaluation of fanworks, a system of cultural production alternative to “high” art or the “mainstream” culture industries. Therefore, instead of another tale of Chinese fandom politics, nisu bots’ dilemmas anticipated the increasingly severe censorship, reporting, canceling, and opposition in mainland China’s entertainment arena today. On the contrary, the Order’s failure to fully mainstream “nisu” corroborates the chaotic queerness in Chinese popular culture.

女性及性少數的愉悅不僅有賦權的潛力，同時可能帶來新的危機。2018至2021年間眾多泥塑bot的困境，則在中國語境下為這個問題提供了新的入口。作為中文網路新造語，“泥塑”實踐可將男性偶像的圖像轉譯為“女性性”的文學符號，譬如“媽咪”、“老婆”和“女兒”。“Bot”為“robot”簡稱，指一種基於新浪微博社交媒體平台、人工運營、發佈主題性投稿的賬號。在本研究中，泥塑bot既是建構出的場所，也是檔案集合的實體。通過酷兒理論的視角，我將泥塑bot置於粉絲文化、亞文化及女性向文化的交叉點，並審視它們在2018-2021年間的權力鬥爭。通過為備受污名的愉悅抗爭，2018年建立的泥塑bot從邊緣挑戰了飯圈組織層面的霸權。在這個過程中，泥塑bot轉化為抵抗的象征場所，形塑了“泥塑粉”這一小眾身份。同時，泥塑bot的種種危機也源於對色情書寫的審查及粉絲創作在藝術生產場域中的邊緣處境。所以，泥塑bot的困境不止是又一個飯圈政治的故事，而預示著今日內娛愈演愈烈的審查、舉報、抵制與對立。相反，秩序無法全面主流化泥塑實踐，也說明了中國流行文化中混亂的酷兒性。

ALL are welcome*

*Pre-registration (Click HERE) is requested.