Infusing patriotism in popular culture: the multimodal construction of patriotic values in a Chinese main melody film

The porous boundary between popular culture and politics has often led to the political appropriation of popular cultural venues for promoting official ideologies and fostering patriotic consciousness. To understand how patriotic values are infused into popular culture, this study analyzes a 2019 Chinese “main melody” film, My People, My Country, from a social semiotic perspective. To examine the interplay between power, narrative, and patriotism, a framework is developed to analyze the patriotic values and how they are constructed through linguistic and visual resources. Analysis shows that patriotism represented in the film incorporates four types of values, namely, national shame and pride, self-sacrifice, kindness, and diligence. These values are realized through the multimodal design of characters’ actions and historical events. The findings shed new light on evolving Chinese patriotism and the unique cultural governance in China shaped by the entangled forces of neoliberalism and Chinese culture.