Abstract
In China, marketization has brought about changes in the cultural industry, resulting in some tensions between the state’s propaganda concern and the consumption imperative. Using revolutionary television dramas as a lens, this study examines how the state seeks to contain the tensions to maintain the hegemonic framework, and how the market negotiates old and new meanings through various encoding and decoding strategies. It is found that the state’s regulatory control unintentionally gives rise to diversified representations of the revolutionary genre and sparks divergent public opinions. The production of new meanings nevertheless reinforces rather than challenge the state hegemony.