UCLA

How did disco culture, a sexualized and subversive form of late-night entertainment, become a nationalist symbol highlighting “socialist spiritual civilization” during China’s early reform era? Centering on the keywords “remix” and “modernity,” this thesis examines the changing connotations of “disco” as presented in the People’s Daily and investigates two types of disco-based remixed cultural production in the 1980s and 1990s: the song “Xintianyou” and the practice of senior disco. Reflecting on the production and mediation of these two cultural phenomena in post-Mao society, this thesis argues that the recontextualization of disco culture in China reveals the efforts of both the official government and the general public to reconcile nationalism and globalization, as well as politics and entertainment, as the country navigated its way toward modernization amidst cultural dissolution in the late 20th century.