So my wife and I attended a recording of the Tbtn version of this year's annual spring festival variety show the other day. It was the worst I've ever seen. The variety shows have gotten worse over the last few years. No "A-list" performers, no comedies. This makes it two years in a row without a comedy. But even more surprising was the conspicuous absence even of rdung len singers and folksong performers.
The theme this year was spring, and so there where a disproportionate number of ridiculous dances with people wearing "Tbtn clothes" with enormous flowers coming out the tops (I mean like the petals where bigger than the dancers in some cases). The performances were all still vaguely recognizable as being Tbtn, but they were epically bad. So here's the (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek question: Why have the last two been so incredibly bad. I've got a couple of potential options that come to mind. It's possible that it's a combination of these: 1) The producers, most of whom live in the city, are getting further and further removed from the culture and have lost touch with their audience 2) They have no budget to get A-list acts. Personally this one seems like it can't be true. I mean, monasteries can get A-list acts for summer concerts, so I have to imagine that it'd have to be possible. Rig 'dzin sgrol ma was the only A-list performer, and her song was very underwhelming. The lyrics of a bunch of the songs were just like "It's Losar! Yeah! It's losar!" The performances seemed as lackluster as the lyrics. 3) Things are too sensitive 4) Nobody's celebrating Losar much anyway due to the many sad things that continue to happen on the plateau… so phone-in the variety show as a solidarity thing? 5) It's a clever ruse intended to get people to start preserving their own culture. If the TV show is awful, maybe people won't want to watch it, and instead will revive traditional ways of celebrating the New Year. It's possible, right? I find number five highly implausible, but it's the one I find most palatable.
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About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |