Illusionary fairness and controlled democracy: a critical examination of blind audition and voting system in The Voice of China

Abstract

This article critically examines the blind audition and the voting system in The Voice of China to understand how the singing competition show narrates the most contemporary political, social, and cultural ideology of the Chinese society in the discourse of globalization. The article starts with an overview and some highlights of the show. Then this article explores how the blind audition serves as the venue for the ordinary Chinese viewers to engage with an illusion of fairness in a society. Next, this article investigates how the re-creation of the voting mechanism in the show symbolizes the fantasy of democracy and how it negotiates the power between the public and the state. I conclude with the argument that societal discourses on the blind audition and voting systems on a singing competition show reveal growing public awareness of and concern with issues of equity and fairness in the cultural arena of traditional esthetic standards as well as the societal arena of electoral politics.

Keywords

On 15 July 2016, the singing competition show Sing! China, formerly known as The Voice of China, aired as anticipated after a months-long lawsuit on rights to the brand name between the local partner and the Dutch producer of The Voice franchise. Audiences that had watched any episode of the first four seasons of The Voice of China could easily identify that the so-called new show still followed the old format: the same judging panel, the same competition process – blind auditions, battle rounds, and live performance – and the same voting mechanism. The major differences included a change of host, the redesigning of the stage setting, and a new logo. Due to the copyright controversy, the new show had to abandon its signature chair-turning trick in the blind auditions during which the judges turn their seats to face the contestants they selected to work with. In the new season, the judges sat on chariot-like chairs that slid down 15-foot high pathways and rushed toward the contestants. The old logo of a hand making a V gesture while holding a real microphone diagonally was redesigned as a hand holding a cartoonish torch vertically. On the top of the torch is not a flame but a big shining star representing the winner of the competition and surrounding it are four smaller stars representing four judges. Next to the image are both the Chinese and English names of the new show.

Putting aside the change of the name, a new logo, and some adjustment of the stage setting, the blind audition and the voting mechanism have stayed the same. For the purpose of discussion, this article exclusively focuses on The Voice of China, although such discussion is equally relevant to the rebranded Sing! China. As one of the biggest selling points, the blind audition works not just to draw audience attention and to create a media sensation, but also to openly address the issue of fairness and to challenge the social norms on esthetics. The voting system, which is not based on mass participation, narrates the ongoing power struggle between democratic forces and state control in China. The two are not only functionally necessary to the show but also reflect the current political culture in the Chinese society.

In this article, I first provide an overview of the show, with some highlighted performances, unique personalities, and media criticism. In my examination of the blind audition, I trace its origin, analyze its application in the show, demystify what has been blinded, and who has been blinded both inside and outside the show, and elaborate on how the specific setting serves as a venue for the ordinary Chinese viewers to engage with an illusion of fairness in a society where discrimination and bias are common and powerful. I then explore how the voting mechanism in Chinese popular media has experienced ups and downs, how it has been re-created in the show, how it symbolizes the fantasy of democracy for the ordinary Chinese citizens, and how, as a form of controlled democracy, it is a negotiation of power between the public and the state. I conclude with the argument that societal discourses on the blind audition and voting systems, on a singing competition show subject to strict censorship and the requirement to align with politically correct ideology, reveal growing public awareness of and concern with issues of equity and fairness in the cultural arena of traditional esthetic standards as well as the societal arena of electoral politics.

The Voice of China: an overview and some highlights

On 13 July 2012, The Voice of China debuted on the Zhejiang Television network. Based on the original program, The Voice of Holland, the premise of the show was to look for new singing talent in public auditions. Each season of the show consists of three main phases: blind auditions, battle rounds, and live performances. Each season begins with a blind audition during which the four judges form their teams of contestants whom they mentor through the remainder of the season. Unlike the format of other popular talent shows, such as Idol and Got Talent, The Voice format is intended to set the selection criteria solely on aural esthetics in order to avoid any possible bias caused by the visual distraction of a contestant’s physical appearance and stage manner. Thus, judges make their decisions based on the power, clarity, and singing skill. In The Voice of China, first, all judges sit on chairs facing away from the stage. Judges are not able to see the auditionees until they decide who to recruit to their team. When a judge selects an auditionee he or she pushes a button and the chair turns around to face the stage; once a judge has done this he or she can enjoy the rest of the performance visually as well as aurally. If more than one judge turns around, the contestant is able to pick which team he or she wants to join in. If nobody turns around, the contestant fails the blind audition. Each judge has a maximum number of contestants they can add to their team.¹

In the second stage of the show, the four judges take the lead in training their contestants with the help of ‘Dream Coaches’ (‘Trusted Advisors’ in other English-speaking franchises) who are renowned singing artists or musicians. Coaches provide professional advice on singing and performance skills as well as tips for success as a musician and in life. After training, there is a battle round in which each coach pairs two team members for a duet performance and chooses one to advance to the next stage. The battle round is followed by the playoff stage in which contestants are randomly paired and each performs a solo song, after which the main coach narrows down the team members to four. With four surviving members in each team, they compete head-to-head against members from another team, with both the coaches and the media-judging panel² casting votes to determine the best four contestants who will advance to the final performance.

In the final phase, the remaining contestants compete against each other in live broadcasts at different stadiums. Beginning in season three, Beijing National Stadium, designed for the 2008 Olympic games and known as the Bird’s Nest, became a regular place for the finales. This iconic venue symbolizes national pride and it is the highest honor to perform in it. Unlike other Voice franchises that explicitly have money and fame bestowed upon the winner, The Voice of China, along with many other talent shows in China, tends to avoid the articulation of fame and profit, even though these are eventually and paradoxically recurrent topics associated with the shows. The finale is more like a live concert than a competition show; it features both audio and visual sensations and celebrates and concludes a successful, months-long musical journey.

Since its debut, The Voice of China has become an annual summer event ardently anticipated by Chinese audiences. Each season is premiered on a Friday night in mid-July and concludes on the night of October 7, the last night of the Golden Week of the Chinese National Day.³ Each season devotes a set number of episodes to the blind auditions in which judges build their musical teams. Na Ying, one of the living legends of the Chinese music world, is the only judge who has participated in all seasons. Her trainees Liang Bo, Zhang Bichen, and Zhang Lei were the winners of season one, three, and four, respectively. Having trained multiple champions has become her selling strategy to win over contestants in the blind auditions. Wang Feng, the leading figure of contemporary Chinese rock music, started as the recurring judge in the second season. His appearance on the show became a lure for young rock musicians who came to follow his rock spirit. Harlem Yu, the Taiwanese musician who is widely acknowledged by Chinese audiences for his bold experiments in fusing different musical genres in Mandopop⁴ music industry, participated in all seasons except season 3. Other judges appeared in one or two seasons but left memorable impressions on the screen. Liu Huan, one of the founding fathers of Chinese popular music and a national musical icon, was the judge of the first season of The Voice of China and the second season of Sing! China. Yang Kun, a popular singer-songwriter who is renowned for his uniquely coarse and heavy singing voice, attended seasons 1 and 3. Season 4 introduced the Taiwanese musician Jay Chou to the coaching panel. Chou, seen as ‘undeniably the most popular Chinese singer in a number of Chinese communities’ (Fung, 2008: 69), has become one of the selling points of the show and has been used to draw younger viewers. Two more Taiwanese musicians, A-mei and Chyi Chin, participated as judges in seasons 2 and 3, respectively.

Celebrity judges in the show bring both their musical expertise and their unique personalities. The real focus of the show, however, is undeniably on the contestants. In season 1, new college graduate Zhang Wei astonished four judges with his androgynous voice and extremely high pitch. The 25-year-old female rapper Chen Zitong boldly arranged Chou’s signature rap song Shuang Jie Kun (2001) and choreographed it in front of her musical idol to express her attitude as a female rocker in season 4. Also in season 4, a 21-year-old college student, Leon Lee from Australia, sang a mash-up of rap, R&B, and the Beatles’ song Yesterday (1965) with a deep, soft, but manly voice and won surprisingly high votes from the studio audience, which advanced him into the finale as an additional fifth finalist. Other memorable contestants include the bald singer Ping An, who performed the patriotic song I Love You, China (1979) with a clear voice and perfect skill; the witch singer Wu Mochou, whose unconventional singing style was heavily criticized by the audience, though she eventually became the runner-up; the established female singer Yao Beina, who came to search for her simple and authentic self but triggered an immediate Internet discussion about the legitimacy of a professional participating in the show;⁵ the sunshine boy from Los Angeles, Will Jay, who surprised the judges with his bilingual performance of the Lemon Tree (1995) while skillfully playing the ukulele; and the lead singer of a Hong Kongese band called Rocky Chan, whose performance of a classic Cantonese song revisualized the golden age of the Cantopop of the 1980s. These names, among many others, have not just confirmed the show’s capacity to transform nobody into somebody, but have also created new media dynamics and, I believe, will write the new history of Chinese popular music.

The show, as either The Voice of China or Sing! China, has undoubtedly created a remarkable sensation in both Chinese popular media and in the larger society. But by no means is it a simple entertainment show produced in the trend of global reality TV and passively consumed by a mass audience. It is, more importantly, a show that narrates the current political, social, and cultural ideology of Chinese society in the discourse of globalization. In the following sections, I will analyze two specific features of the show – the blind audition and the voting system – in order to better understand how, on one hand, the show both reflects and provides a mediascape (Appadurai, 1990) for negotiating internal social dynamics in China, and on the other hand, connects Chinese society, through expressive culture, to the external world.

The blind audition: an illusion of fairness

Goldin and Rouse (2000) studied the change in the selection processes adopted by American symphony orchestras. From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, symphonies increasingly opted to hide the gender and racial identity of players from the jury. Goldin and Rouse describe rounds of live auditions in which candidates had to play behind large pieces of heavy cloth suspended from the ceiling of the symphony hall, while the jury rated their performance on a sheet of paper that contained only an identification number (p. 721). Goldin and Rouse argue that these blind auditions are truly anonymized due to the lack of visual and verbal engagement, and limited time for the committee to identify the candidate from other cues (p. 722). However, the final stages of the auditions are rarely truly blind because music directors often sit in and wield their power to override the audition committee’s decision.

In 2010, The Voice of Holland first introduced the concept of blind audition to the popular media, aiming to highlight the pure vocal quality and ignore the role looks have played in talent contests (The Voice, 2018). In line with the original purpose of American symphony orchestras, the show nominally intends to create an unbiased space for vocalists to best demonstrate their voices. But there are three major differences between The Voice blind audition format and that used by American symphony orchestras. First, The Voice is a singing competition show highlighting the performance of popular music, while the American symphony orchestra is a professional musical ensemble featuring classical music or serious music (Adorno, 2009). In Adorno’s understanding, due to the effects of cultural industry, these two different styles of music are highly binarized in terms of musical structures, production and consumption modes, and cultural meanings. Although postmodern theory has sought to deconstruct the binary opposition between high and low culture, and the hierarchy of value is not as tenacious as it once was, it continues to exert a certain force in popular and elite discourses (Miklitsch, 2006). On one hand, The Voice producers intend the blind audition format to be an entertaining and effective marketing tool that will attract the most audience attention. American symphony orchestras, on the other hand, use blind audition to select the best candidates, those whose musical talent and skill can help the team achieve ‘the utmost dramatic momentum’ (Adorno, 2009: 64). Thus, if the blind audition, as used by American symphony orchestras, serves the basic function of selecting the best in the fairest way, The Voice format uses it not only to find the best but, more importantly, to pursue the capitalistic goal of realizing the largest profits from the mass of entertainment consumers.

The second difference lies in the audition target. In orchestral auditions, the jury considers both how well each candidate plays with his or her instrument and how well their performances fit into the instrumental ensemble. As described by Goldin and Rouse (2000), in the blind audition, each candidate has only about 5–10 minutes to play and ‘there is little or no room for individuality to be expressed and not much time for it to be detected’ (p. 722). Despite some criticism, the blind audition was still considered as an ‘enormously significant validation of the musicians selected for orchestra positions’ (p. 23) in a contemporary study by the League of American Orchestra (Rabkin and O’Connell, 2016). In the broadcast blind auditions on The Voice, the four judges listen to the human voices, which differ from person to person in the pitch, volume, timber, as well as pronunciation, articulation, and the way the singers interact with the instrumental accompaniment. Thus it is possible that judges can recognize a particular human voice and identify the singer in the blind audition. In the first season of The Voice of China, Guan Zhe, a professional singer-songwriter who had already released several albums, was soon recognized with his singing voices by Na Ying and Yang Kun who had previously worked with him. There are also contestants whose voices are identifiable because of their resemblance to renowned singers. For example, still in season 1, 19-year-old high-school graduate, Zheng Hong, impressed the judges by singing an uncannily-Adele-like rendition of Some Like You (2011) and she was immediately dubbed the ‘Chinese Adele’ by the judges. In season 4, an ethnically Chinese Thai teenager, Lang-ga-la-mu, astonished both the judges and the audience with her indistinguishable vocal performance of Endless Word (1972), one of the signature songs of the 1980s’ Taiwanese musical legend Teresa Teng. However, these identifiable voices are exactly what hinder them from moving forward and none of them reached the finales. Simply put, it may be difficult to recognize a player by listening to his or her instrumental performance in the blind audition of the symphony orchestra, but it is possible to recognize a familiar voice in the blind audition of the singing competition show. The exposure of the identity of a certain contestant may cause unfair judgment that can either does harm to him/herself or to other contestants.

The third difference between the symphonies’ blind auditions and The Voice format is the role of the audience. In most orchestral auditions, players are required to audition live in three different rounds. In each round, the selection committee is both the judges and the audience, whose professional ears allow them to vote for the most qualified player. The Voice of China and other Voice franchises works differently. The blind auditions, recorded and also highly edited, are only a small part of the whole audition process. Pre-auditions, not blind, occur in selected cities around the world months before the show is broadcast. Grey (2015) describes the bustling scene of the preliminary audition for The Voice of China Season 4 in Australia. The local contestants had to perform in front of judges, who gave feedback and made the final decision on which performers stayed and which left. The official website for the European recruitment for season 4 clearly states, ‘the organizer will select talented contestants who will be invited to the Studio Auditions … The Top 15 will be selected for the European Audition Finale … The ultimate winner will represent Europe to enter “The Voice of China” … in China!’ (The Voice of China, 2015). The website also lists three judges for the final audition, two of whom are outstanding contestants from previous seasons of The Voice of China. But these pre-auditions will never be broadcast because they are raw and not juicy enough for a reality TV esthetic. Unlike the candidates for the orchestral auditions, who only perform for professional musicians, the contestants on The Voice have to face a variety of evaluators, including producers, onsite judges, blind audition judges, studio audiences, and media viewers of the show. Of all these, only the four judges who appear in the broadcast footage are intentionally blinded. Everyone else with a vote has the privilege of watching the entire performance of the contestants as well as the four judges’ process as they make their choices.

Thus, the blind audition is contrived, a gimmick to attract audiences’ attention and a tool to imply that a utopic fairness is achievable. This intention and illusion conform to the myth-making function of reality TV – creating heavily edited and polished variations from any original recorded material in order to portray a constructed reality that gratifies the desires of audiences while padding the franchise owner’s bottom line (Miller, 2007). In this sense, Neil Postman (1985) was prescient when he envisioned a world in which entertainment, as a packaged commodity, blurred the boundaries between the real and the constructed. Reality TV, in particular, creates a spectacle to satisfy audiences’ appetite for entertainment by promising them an access to the real, while confining them in ‘yet another highly produced product of culture industry’, effectively only creating confusion between the real and the not real (Andrejevic, 2004: 16).

Unlike the blind audition in the American symphony orchestra, which aims to challenge gender bias and racial discrimination, the blind audition in The Voice seems to both question the traditional view on the appreciation of looks and body and to offer an ideal solution – the creation of a fair environment for selecting musical talent. The application of it in The Voice of China seems to have achieved this goal. At least, it was designed, produced, and represented in that way. Most contestants have claimed that they came to the show because the blind audition puts the focus on vocal quality and skill rather than physical traits. Those who made this claim, however, are normally those who are considered physically unattractive – in terms of looks, body, age, fashion taste, and other visible characteristics – under Chinese social norms. In the entertainment industry and popular media, ‘lookism’, a term ‘that describes prejudice or preferential treatment based on how a person looks’ (Tondeur, 2009: 495) is prevalent and very powerful. Effectively, the code is that without a pretty face and an ideal body, one is doomed to fail regardless of talent, while the opposite story is also true: a pretty face and ideal body significantly increase the chance of success.

In the show’s application of the blind audition to the selection process, it not only clearly assumes that lookist bias exists in the society and is unfair, but also tends to challenge it. The show openly addresses issues of bias and discrimination as wrong and in need of re-evaluation. In a particular way, the show allows individual viewers to reflect upon the problematic evaluation of beauty in traditional Chinese social norm and appeal for the construction and adoption of a new esthetic standard by the society. As reality TV, however, the show presents the problem in an interesting way because the blind audition is only blind to the judges, not to the studio audiences, nor to the viewers in front of the screen.

For contestants, the blind audition seems to create a space to show their musical talent in a fair competition. For judges, the only evaluators to actually be blinded, the blind audition is a test of their professionalism, their personal taste in musical appreciation, and their prescient acumen in identifying potentially successful musicians. For both studio audiences and media watchers, the blind audition demystifies the selection process of this televised talent contest, confirms the existence and unfairness of the bias caused by lookism, and reveals the problematic nature of esthetic standards in contemporary Chinese society. But more importantly, it offers audiences a channel to voyeuristic pleasure; as they watch celebrity judges express jaw-dropping astonishment and contestants perform and self-enjoy in front of the blinded judges, audiences can fantasize about being the foreground of the public attention. For producers, the blind audition is a smart industrial strategy to meet contestants’ needs, to satisfy audiences’ curiosity, and to eventually achieve the profitable goal.

The constructed blind auditions seem to promise a society with a unified criterion for esthetics and a commitment to pure fairness. But as soon as the show enters into the second and the third stage – battle rounds and live performances – the illusion of fairness collapses. A selection criterion based on looks and body, rather than musical talent alone, returns to the viewers’ attention. While it is not necessarily the case that the contestants with the best looks and ideal body always outshine those who only possess excellent vocal quality and skills, it is definitely true that those who are physically attractive, and whose singing is not bad, have a better shot at moving ahead, not just in the competition but also in their post-show musical careers. It is equally true that those with beautiful voices who lack normatively attractive physical attributes get eliminated pretty quickly. Even if their phenomenal voices enable them to go farther in the show, their prospects in popular media are dim and they are soon forgotten by the public.

Thus, while the show’s use of the blind audition yields sensational twists for viewers and appears to challenge social norms, aesthetical criteria, and power dynamics, it effectively reaffirms normative and inequitable appearance valuations. That said, the blind audition is by no means the only mechanism affecting the competition results. The voting system plays a fundamental role in the selection process. The following section examines how the voting system affects the progress of the show and what messages it conveys in Chinese society.

The voting system: controlled democracy

Audience voting has been adopted by the reality TV sector of the broadcasting industry to leverage the desire of audiences to have a voice in show outcomes, to enhance viewer engagement and loyalty, and to tap a previously unknown source of revenue (Enli and Ihlebaek, 2011: 955). The earliest examples include the vote-out system in Big Brother that calls the viewers to evict the contestants they dislike and the vote-for system in Pop Idol format that encourages the audience to vote to keep their favorite performers. Slogans like ‘You decide!’ (Big Brother), ‘But this time you choose!’ (Pop Idol) and ‘If you want to have your say’ (The Salon) are common, indicating an increasingly participatory relationship between viewers and the screen (Holmes, 2004a: 214). In addition, ongoing improvements in interactive digital technologies allow viewers to actively engage with a specific program and to intervene in its course (Van Zoonen, 2004).

Scholarly conversations regarding audience voting concentrate on two themes: interactivity and democracy. The discussion of the first theme considers audiences as active consumers, customers, players, and participants in the program (Syvertsen, 2004) and their participation, voting via phone-ins, and text messaging particularly, can generate a considerable amount of revenue (Bignell, 2005). Thus the industry benefits from loyal viewers’ economic contribution, while viewers feel empowered in influencing the show’s outcome. The reciprocity brought by the voting system represents a micro arena for the negotiations of power between viewers and the media industry (Enli and Ihlebaek, 2011). The discussion of the second theme considers the voting process in various reality TV shows as a parallel to the voting in political elections. Both require a commitment to candidates and a willingness to vote. Meizel (2011) sees the audience voting system in American Idol as ‘the pinnacle of consumer choice camouflaged in the familiar trappings of democratic process’ (p. 3). Holmes (2004b) and Fairchild (2007) have questioned the validity of the claim to democracy since viewers can only vote at certain stages and their agency is thus limited by the producers.

The audience voting system was first introduced to China in 2004 with the launch of the non-copyrighted local Idol show, Super Girl. The 2005 season brought the highest viewership and the voting was really caught on. In the 3-hour long finale, the would-be champion Li Yuchun received 3.5 million text message votes, while the runner-up Zhou Bichang got 3.27 million votes (Cui and Lee, 2010). Despite the huge number of voting viewers, their votes are counterbalanced by the professional judges and the popular judges. The popular judge panel, consisting of media representatives, was actually an invention in the Chinese media context and their engagement in the voting process indicated the show’s intention and ambition to establish stronger public credibility. Their involvement, according to Yang (2014), ‘created the most sensational suspense in the show as the audience, both inside and outside the studio, nervously watch dozens of popular judges, one by one, walk up toward the two boxes placed in front of the two contestants and cast their ballots’ (p. 523). This pattern, with the seemingly legitimate ethos of representing both professional and public opinions, has been repetitively employed by other reality TV shows in China.

Due to the massive audience engagement in choosing their favorite ‘super girl’, the show was seen as ‘paradoxically the most commercial and the most democratic reality show in China’ (Yang, 2014: 518). According to Meng (2009), scholars who celebrate the democratic success of the show generate two main arguments. First, the show, for the first time in history, conferred a sort of enfranchisement on Chinese audiences in allowing them to pick their favorite candidate. Second, fan communities were formed during the broadcasting of the show that entailed both online and offline discussions and campaigning for favored contestants. These two arguments reflect ordinary Chinese people’s burning desire for a suffrage they can only imagine in a country where political voting and electoral campaigns are not commonly practiced.

Unfortunately, wary of the social unrest potentially instigated by the mass voting system, government regulators responded swiftly. In March 2006, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), the executive branch under the State Council, first issued a notice to ban the broadcast of regional rounds of talent contests on provincial satellite television (Zhang, 2006). In the case of Super Girl, among the 46 episodes of the 2005 season, 39 were dedicated to the regional contests, which contributed significantly to the ratings of the national finals and the gradual buildup of audience attachment to the show (Yang, 2014). In 2007, SARFT further announced that voting would only be allowed by the studio audience, and that any form of out-of-studio voting was strictly prohibited. Thus, the popular vote has been completely banned from Chinese media. Due to state regulations and censorship intended to discourage the increasing convergence of media (Jenkins, 2006a) and participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006b) in the Chinese media landscape, Super Girl, along with other singing contests, had to be called off, leading to a popular media claim that the talent-based reality shows are dead in China.

In the summer of 2012, after several years’ waiting, The Voice of China, with its unprecedented and unique blind audition, reclaimed reality-show magic among viewers (Hu et al., 2013). In less than a month, it attracted more than 120 million TV viewers and 400 million Internet users and immediately topped the TV ratings (He, 2012). This time there was neither a popular vote that hailed viewers as possessors of suffrage nor fervent fan groups campaigning for favored contestants. In fact, the voting system designed by the producer is utterly banal. In the blind auditions, the four judges face away from the stage and vote for their favorite contestants based simply on aural assessment. Once judges turn their chair, before the music stops, the voting is accomplished. Their votes are limited by the number of contestants they can recruit in the blind audition stage. However, if more than one judge turns their chair, that contestant has to make his or her vote for one of the judges. In this sense, the contestants were endowed with the agency to vote. This reciprocal-vote mechanism has become one of the most exciting twists for the audience, because it breaks down both the teacher–student relationship and the professional–amateur dichotomy in Chinese society, challenging the traditionally high power held by teachers and professionals (Hofstede, 1986; Stebbins, 1992). Thus, to see a contestant turn down a judge – their potential teacher and a professional musician – is to witness the disempowered accrue agency and the powerful lose their privilege. Many times in the blind audition of The Voice of China, judges are forced to fall back on the rhetoric of persuasion. They are seen either aggressively wooing contestants to join their teams or playfully and even exaggeratedly putting other judges down as a way to assert they are the best coach for a contestant (Dooley, 2017). In this limited sense, the contestants’ right to vote for a judge/team leader can be read as a democratic practice available to ordinary Chinese (embodied by the contestant), even though nationwide voting by the masses is no longer an option. However, this temporary inversion of empowerment is invalidated as soon as the blind auditions conclude.

In battle rounds, the judges regain their power to vote for the contestants. First, contestants in each group battle against each other. The other three judges and the invited ‘dream coach’ give feedback and recommendations on contestants’ performances, but it is the main judge who makes the final decision on whom to advance to the next round. Although the main judge gives solid reasons for their personal choice in front of the camera, disagreements and questions always pop up on media. Second, in the cross battle the remaining contestants from one group compete with another group. At the end of each performance, it is the media representative panel that makes the vote. The concept of using a media panel comes from the voting mechanism in Super Girl. Since an actual popular vote is out of the question in the Chinese media landscape, using a group of professional media critics has become a recurring maneuver in many television contests. These representatives, who watch the entire performance from their seats close to the stage, vote for a specific contestant by holding up boards emblazoned with the names of the media companies they work for. But who these people are, how they are selected, and why they are eligible to vote are mysteries for the audience. It is their voting decisions that are most questioned by the audiences. For example, in season 2 of The Voice of China, Xuan Xuan and Yao Beina from Na Ying’s group were paired to compete against each other (Episode 11, 2013). Yao, an established singer with near-perfect singing skill, excellent stage performance, and even better looks, was defeated by Xuan Xuan by a high margin: 26–75 votes. Contention ignited immediately on different social media platforms as audiences questioned why Yao lost when her performance was flawless (Yu, 2013). Another well-known controversy about the media panel’s voting decision occurred in season 4 when judge Wang Feng expressed outrage over the biased voting result. In the cross battle, Wang’s students were voted out one after another. When his favorite student Bei Bei, the potential champion of the season, was defeated by Lotus Zhang from Harlem Yu’s team (Episode 11, 2015), he burst out, making a short speech to encourage the losing contestants while implicitly blaming the media panel for being unfair toward his students because of prejudice he alleged they held against him.

Despite suspicion and criticism, the media panel continues to be active and powerful in the show. In the live performance, each coach has one surviving contestant to compete for the championship. In the first round, in which no one got eliminated, they perform a duet song with their coach as a warm-up. In the second round, they perform solo and those with the highest onsite audience votes advance directly to the finale, while the others are eliminated. The media panel gets involved only in the finale, when the last two contestants compete against each other, and their votes are combined with the votes from the onsite audience to determine the winner. Rather than holding up a branded board to be counted by the moderator, each member of the media panel casts their ballots by walking from the back to the front of the stage to touch the electronic V-shaped voting machine behind the two finalists. Just as with the broadcast of the voting process in Super Girl several years ago, The Voice of China, uses this maneuver to create, for both the onsite audience and the media viewers, an adrenaline pumping moment over the birth of the new winner.

Unlike the voting procedure used by Super Girl, which ignited extensive discussions on its analogy to political voting, voting on The Voice of China is a mere formality to keep the show functioning properly. Without mass participation, the producers would be unable to obtain huge profits from the show, yet its democracy is only a gloss since the state control has disabled the popular vote from the audience. The use of onsite audience voting is a clumsy and insufficient remedy for the mass viewer voting. No matter how many votes the onsite audiences cast, they only represent a minute percentage of the millions of viewers. Furthermore, there is a lack of transparency about who these audience members are, how they got on the show, and why their decisions can represent the mass viewership. Thus tens of thousands of onsite audience members made their votes via text messages but remained anonymous and unaccountable. In contrast, the media representatives, whoever they are and whichever company they represent, play a bigger and more determinative role in the process. They are empowered as early as the battle stages and are always visible on camera. Although their influence is not on par with the state’s ability to censor and control the show, their power can hardly be ignored. The show’s enactment of voting, as discussed by Wu (2017), positions the audience at the scene as representing the masses of media viewers (a sort of compressed public opinion), yet only succeeds in engendering public suspicion of manipulation and unfairness. Thus, ordinary viewers, who are not privy to the identity and qualification of the voters who supposedly represent the whole audience, lack any actual influence in boosting their favorite contestants and do not have the power to select the winners.

Conclusion

In my discussion of the blind audition and the voting system on The Voice of China, I have investigated the changing power dynamics in contemporary Chinese television in order to explore the convergence of entertainment and politics in the political and cultural context of China and to understand how ordinary Chinese viewers engage with media to negotiate and challenge traditional social norms and state-controlled discourse. With the loosening grip of the state control over media in recent years, there is a growing democratization of the Chinese political landscape. Yet, in many ways, Chinese audiences remain invested in traditional social norms and are still subjected to the ruling ideology.

The blind audition, despite the illusion of fairness it creates for the audiences, is largely controlled by the producers, who need to consider both the show’s profitability and its compliance with political correctness. At the same time, however, the application of the blind audition to a singing competition show and the broadcast of the show do openly address the problem of traditional esthetic standards in Chinese society. While it fails to offer any sufficient solutions, it surely evokes active and critical thinking on the issue. In this sense, the concern that ordinary Chinese may too easily drown in the country’s entertainment media and too happily indulge in a false sense of agency (Wu, 2017) can be countered by recognition of the show’s role in raising the political and cultural awareness of the populace regarding issues of social equity.

The controlled voting system, far from enacting any semblance of democracy, illustrates the power of a small group of people to supplant the voice and contravene the will of the majority. Be it the producers who design the mechanism to achieve their economic and political goals, or the judges who vote as music professionals, or the panel of media representatives who have a big say in the final results, or the onsite audiences who physically attend the carnival-like finales and vote for the favored contestants (Lv, 2006), they are empowered by their privileges, are but a tiny portion of the total audience, and can hardly represent the millions of viewers. From the active popular voting system in Super Girl to the banal, controlled voting mechanism in The Voice of China, the entertainment industry has had to balance three contingencies: creating a system that selects the best contestants, maintaining and expanding market viability, and conforming to the correct political ideology. In spite of continuous intervention by the state, these attempts reflect the efforts and burning desire of ordinary Chinese to more actively engage in the nation’s political culture.

As two separate structures on The Voice of China, the blind audition and the voting system have been functioning in intertwined and interdependent ways. At the same time, as a reality TV franchise, the two structures successfully incorporate the indigenous political and cultural elements to reflect the differences and individuality from the original franchise. Without the illusion of fairness and participation they provide, the show would hardly be as attractive to audiences as it has been. In particular, the blind audition and voting system has positioned the show as a site in which traditional values can be questioned and power between the state and the public is symbolically negotiated.

Looking forward, I believe a comparative study on how The Voice television franchise has been both globalized and localized to reflect different political cultures will be productive. In addition, in future explorations of the interconnection between politics and entertainment in China, I will pursue questions of how audiences use their viewing experiences to learn about the political culture and their civic role, negotiating articulations of individual and national identity, and mediated power between the constructed and the real.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Alberto González and Dr Katherine Meizel for their guidance in writing this article as part of my PhD dissertation. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

ORCID iD

Xinxin Jiang

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