Moé: Soft Politics in Contemporary Visual Culture

Abstract

Abstract: Moé is a word frequently appearing in Chinese pop culture vocabulary in recent years, but its semantics and usage require clarification. Moé, which was borrowed from Japan, has broken the boundary of anime subculture and become a buzzword in mass media. The visuality of moé pertains some typical postmodern traits such like entertainment and flattening. Faux-moé has an extensive popularity that accelerates the confusion between the right and the wrong, the good and the evil. A moé object, constructed by a faux-moé player, could impose soft control and systematic violence to the persons who patronizes it. In this sense, moé can be considered to a display of deceptive visual politics in contemporary society.

Key words: moé, visual culture, faux-moé, politics

Wu Ming. Moé: Soft Politics in Contemporary Visual Culture[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2015, 35(3): 61-68.

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