Entertainingly queer: illiberal homonormativity and transcultural queer politics in a Chinese Broadway musical

This paper investigates the cultural politics in the recent proliferation of queer popular cultural products in China through a case study of Q Dadao, a Chinese adaptation of the Broadway musical Avenue Q. Situating the musical in the illiberal conditions of concurrent economic liberalization and ideological control in a globalizing China, the paper examines how liberationist politics embedded in the original musical is transculturally negotiated and reimagined in the Chinese version to engender fundamentally new queer tactics. In particular, the paper highlights the paradoxes and ambivalences in the musical’s cultural politics, and puts forward a framework of illiberal homonormativity to understand complexity and multifariousness of queer identities and embodiments in China today.