Between informal and formal cultural economymost important ‘mental emancipation’ movement” (Olesen 2014). For many online audiences,
fansubs are made by “people of our own community,” unlike the officially sanctioned subtitles
offered by the TV and film industries ( Jenkins 2013). The fansub culture, mainly promoted by
young people, exemplifies the desire of Chinese urban youth culture to find alternative spaces
for expressive individualism in a highly regulated political climate that does not encourage
direct confrontation with the government (Liu 2013, 68, 194–195). The uninhibited energy of
self-expression in subtitle production is not simply a form of sociable comradeship among the
inner circles of fan communities, but also a commitment to reach the broader population of
online audiences who identify greatly with the autonomy found in searching for and viewing
programs online.
“When one YYeTs falls down, thousands of YYeTs will stand up,” Chinese blogger Yang
Shiyang notes, in words intended to boost morale among online audiences supporting YYeTs
and Chinese subtitle groups in general (Yang 2014). Yang criticizes the Chinese government
for remaining in the “pre-Internet age,” which insists on control and copyright constraints. He
reveals himself as a new generation of Chinese netizen, a member of the participatory online
audience that experiments together on the Internet, creating subtitles with a sense of freedom
and rebellion. In my reading, Yang implies that the official crackdown on the subtitle websites
challenges not merely a few subtitle groups, but also the millions of online audience members
who stand by these groups. That is, the collective strength of netizens cannot be underestimated;
they share the Internet’s characteristics of affection, freedom, spontaneity, and mobility.
The Chinese state’s decision to shut down the sites could be futile in the long run. After the
demise of YYeTs and Shooter, a new strategy for online audiences to access Chinese subtitled
content emerged. Viewers began to use Weibo (a microblog) and WeChat (a messaging com-
munication platform) to look for a “resource God,” someone who aggregates and distributes
the shows (Li 2014). In fact, YYeTs itself seems to be still alive in a mysterious way. Though the
group’s once popular website no longer exists, echoes of the group’s activities can be seen in the
blogs and microblogs of fans who are secretively connected with YYeTs fansubbers. It appears
that the decentralized nature of the Internet will always foster new forms of grassroots networks
and reinventions and thereby continue the pioneering work begun by subtitle groups, even
though some of them have now faded into history.
As Internet-enabled producers and consumers in the age of digitized modernity, Chinese
subtitle groups are especially interesting research subjects. The specificity of Chinese subtitle
groups may attract researchers who are interested in fan studies and fansub culture. There have
been studies of fansubs in the United States and Italy, but there are few comparative studies of
the fansubbing phenomenon in different countries (Barra 2009; Lee 2011). It is hoped that
Chinese subtitle groups can be included in such comparative studies. Future studies can explore
the differences and similarities of subtitle groups in different countries at various levels, such as
their ways of organizing and mobilizing, the contexts which encourage fansubbing activities,
and their relationship with the anti-piracy practices of both governments and copyright-owning
businesses. Such studies will contribute to our understanding of the ways in which the fansub
cultures of different countries are shaped by national, cultural, technological, and geographical
influences, while also representing a new culture of their own.
references
Barra, L. (2009). “The Mediation is The Message: Italian Regionalization of US TV Series as Co-creational
Work.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12(5): 509–525.
Chen, Q. (2014). “Listing the Businesses My Love From the Star have saved.” Accessed March 9, 2014. http://
finance.takungpao.com.hk/gscy/q/2014/0309/1376116_11.html.