Cultural Consumption of Tuwei: The Conflicted Lowbrow Appeal of the “Rural Flavor” Video in China
Open AccessThis study adopts Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to examine the ways of consumption of the tuwei (土味, roughly translated as “rural flavor,” or more colloquially, “redneck video”) among its culturally sophisticated enthusiasts. Few studies on the tuwei video have associated the ways of watching or the viewership with the enthusiasts’ cultural capital. This research examines and conceptualizes how Chinese cultural elites consume the popular but widely criticized video genre. Five focus groups were convened to collect qualitative data about participants viewing response to tuwei videos. The focus groups revealed five distinct consumption patterns: ironic consumption, camp sensibility, referential reception, conscious consumption, and peeping. Ironic consumption and camp sensibility have been identified by previous studies. Referential reception contradicted findings of prior research findings. Conscious consumption and peeping were cultural consumption patterns unique to this study. Findings suggest that with the exception of conscious consumers, viewers can hold more than one viewing stance while watching a single video or different viewing stances when watching different videos.
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