Hybridity, glocalization, and the negotiation of contemporary Chineseness in guoman (national animation): White Snake: Afloat (2024)

Abstract This article examines Light Chaser’s animation White Snake: Afloat (2024) within the context of the revival of Chinese guoman 國漫 (national animation) since the 2010s. It reflects on a key gap in existing literature: a failure to analyse the dynamic interplay of state ideology, market demands, and animators’ agency in the construction of specific guoman texts. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework comprising Homi Bhabha’s ‘hybridity’, Roland Robertson’s ‘glocalization’, and Weiyu Zhang’s ‘Chineseness as identity work’, this article explores how the tripartite negotiation leads to distinct forms of hybridity across three aspects of the film—techno-artistic, narrative, and structural—against the backdrop of media glocalization. The analysis also examines how the film’s hybrid forms embody competing versions of Chineseness. The overall argument is that the hybridity in Afloat is a product of the triad’s complex negotiation; it illuminates the contentious status quo of contemporary Chineseness as a globalized ‘identity work’—a dynamic, ongoing, and contested process of constructing identity, encompassing not only a subject’s self-identification but also how others identify that subject.