Two of Zhao Benshan's Comic Skits: Their Critical Implications in Contemporary China

This paper explores the critical significance of two of Zhao Benshan's comic skits ”Selling Crutches” and ”Selling a Wheelchair” in the context of contemporary China. Through a close analysis of the commercial mode of deception, this paper establishes the critical potential of Zhao's skits to expose the art of influence and the paradigm of power in the general practice of hegemony. In so doing, this paper proves its central claim: Zhao's skits, by way of showing how the desired customer is constructed, point to the inherent problems of market ideology and the danger of modernization as homogenization. In the skits' aesthetic engagement of the audience and in the plurality of meaning that the audience's responses manifest, this paper locates Zhao's critical power-posing a forceful critique of the promotion of any absolute (concept, perspective, or mode of life) and cultivating a critical consciousness for the continuing creation of democratic sensibility.