Melon Eaters: Class and Character in Lumpen Media Worlds
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（此場演講將以英文進行）
講題摘要：
橫店影視城是中國大陸最大的影視基地，吸引了成千上萬的失業農民工前來，在仿照歷史宮殿搭建的戶外布景擔任群眾演員。自2018年以來，許多農民工開始在群眾演員和營利化直播之間切換，成為永遠窮困潦倒的「橫漂」，尋求擺脫無產階級生活的另一種出路。疫情之後，橫店出現了一群自稱「大神（dashen/ great gods）」的群體，他們開始直播另一種農民工的生活方式。 「大神」指的是深圳三和大神，這是一個由前工廠工人組成的次文化群體，他們認為打工毫無意義，是苦差事。大神們想方設法逃避工作，並接受一些被社會污名化的行為，他們自稱「神」，以此挑戰人們對農民工的典型階級期望。
本次演講基於在橫店的參與式觀察田野調查，認為橫店的大神們已經將這種次文化轉化為一種集體媒體表演，顛覆了網紅經濟的邏輯。大神們並沒有像網紅那樣發展成擁有大量忠實粉絲的付費粉絲群體，而是培養了一批對他們的滑稽行為感到厭惡的觀眾。這些觀眾雖然被他們的滑稽舉動所吸引，卻很少會送禮物支持他們。大神們將觀眾的負面情緒武器化，煽動複雜的人際紛爭，這些紛爭透過對「墮落」角色刻板印象的自覺演繹而展開。他們生活在一個充滿陰謀詭計的媒體世界，模糊了角色、表演和社會關係之間的界線。在這個過程中，大神們在橫店中互相索取金錢、食物和社交義務，將媒體平台變成了互相勒索的舞台。
Hengdian World Studios is the largest film studio in mainland China, attracting thousands of unemployed migrants to work as background actors on outdoor sets modeled on historical palaces. Since 2018, many of these migrants began shifting between background acting and their own monetized livestreams as perpetually broke "Hengdian drifters" seeking an alternative to proletarianized life. After the pandemic, a separate group of self-styled "dashen" (大神) began streaming another kind of alternative to migrant labor in Hengdian. Dashen, or "great gods," refers to the Sanhe dashen, a subculture of ex-factory workers in Shenzhen who rejected wage labor as pointless drudgery. Scheming to avoid work and embracing stigmatized behavior, dashen called themselves "gods" in defiance of typical class aspirations expected of rural migrants.
Based on participant-observation fieldwork in Hengdian, this talk argues that Hengdian's dashen have turned this subculture into a collective media performance that inverts the logic of the influencer economy. Instead of growing monetized audiences of supportive fans, dashen cultivate small viewerships of disgusted spectators who are entranced by their antics, but rarely support them with gifts. Dashen weaponize audience toxicity, fueling complicated interpersonal feuds that unfold through self-aware engagement with "degenerate" character-tropes. They inhabit a mediated world of intrigue that blurs character, performance, and social relationship. In the process, dashen make claims on each other for money, food, and social obligations in Hengdian, turning media platforms into a theater of mutual extortion.
