Yung-Hang Lai, “Wang Baoqiang: the Man-Child Bumpkin in Chinese Comedy Films,” Genre en séries : cinéma, télévision, médias 12/13 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.4000/ges.3209.
Wang Baoqiang is a Chinese comedian well known for his bumpkin man-child characters. Whereas critics worry that the return of the man-child in Hollywood comedy signals a retreat from responsibility, I will argue that Wang’s man-child roles in the films Lost on Journey (2010) and Lost in Thailand (2012) not only bring about laughter but also challenge the neoliberal entrepreneurial subjectivity which informs the norms of masculinity in China. Such subjectivity is embodied by the contrasting anxious middle-class roles played by Xu Zheng in these films.