Chen (2014) surveys the popularity of the North American rage comics among young Chinese on the Internet by mapping the ways in which the riotous humor has been able to cross cultural boundaries in China"s cyber space, and recognizes the political significance of this subculture for having created room for emotional and political catharsis despite the unlikelihood that it will ever lead to political reform. The gender-based analysis by Wallis (2015) of three illustrative cases of gender-based production of subculture exposes the discursive collusion between the Internet subculture in China and patriarchy and misogyny, warns against the academic tendency to happily glorify any form of resistance and finally demonstrates the need to confront the flaws of online resistance within the framework of China"s post-socialist gender politics. Although Baozou manhua is an Internet phenomenon emerging from the specific sociopolitical context of contemporary China, examining this form of expression not only sheds light on popular online culture in China and the issues Chinese netizens grapple with but also provides an understanding of how digital visual culture changes across time and space as North American rage faces circulate around the world and garner new meaning after being appropriated and reinterpreted in the ‘interpretative community’ of Chinese cyberspace. It also explores how computer software technology and the Internet have influenced contemporary Chinese visual humour by focusing on the Internet community. This paper examines how the genre of Baozou manhua enables Chinese netizens to vent about their everyday experiences and frustrations of daily life. The emergence of Baozou manhua signifies a new form of expression for ordinary netizens where they move from simply being consumers of comics to producers, combining image and text in a humorous way and distributing them via a wide variety of communication tools.
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