Casting an ‘Outsider’ in the ritual centre: Two decades of performances of ‘Rural Migrants’ in CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala

Abstract

Recent years have seen the rise of the ‘processual approach’ in media ritual studies, which focuses on the making of media rituals through various ‘ritualised actions’ rather than assuming them as isolated events distinctive to ordinary broadcasting. This article advances this line of argument by shedding light on a previously less-discussed form of ritualised action: the ritualised casting. It examines how the character of ‘rural migrant’ has been staged in the 28-year history of China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala and how the casting of this ‘social outsider’ served as a dynamical strategy in the process of ritualisation of the Gala. The case study demonstrates a persistently central position of the image of ‘rural migrants’ in the Gala in the past 21 years, yet the scripting of this ritual subject varied as the agendas and crises of ritualisation shifted. This ritualised casting not only delivered a self-replicating effect that made the success of the Gala as natural and desired, but also, it exhibited a power to converge the media’s categories with other social categories, which further legitimised the ritual authority of the Gala as a mediated centre in the festival space of the Chinese New Year.