ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the emergence, constitution, and diversification of independent animation in Mainland China since the beginning of the new millennium were informed by the spread of computer-generated imagery technology and the Internet. It discusses the prescribed categories and binary oppositions that attempt to locate practices and forms either as an integrated part of the culture industry or as advocacy of the Chinese School. The chapter explores the complex contexts that may be undermining the goal of cultural homogeneity. These alternatives are marked broadly by a reflexive individual resistance to mainstream styles and values, a sense of free expression, and an often unabashed link with consumer society. But its contemporary expressions also reveal another story in which cultural nostalgia emerges as a memory with a signified break in narrative and a disruption of historical hegemony in the socialist neoliberal everyday that can be understood easily by independent animators and by ordinary people.
