China’s Cell Block Tango: the revenge tale music video putting violence against women in the spotlight
- Adaptation of hit from American musical Chicago prompts outpouring online before being taken down
“Hutong”, “Saxophone”, “Son of a bitch”, “Didi”, “Fourteenth Floor” and “Your Daughter’s Sleeping”.
So goes the start of a hit contemporary Chinese take on Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago, a revenge tale that has racked up more than 50 million views since going online on China’s Twitter-like Weibo service on Wednesday, reigniting discussion over violence against women.
In the video, five women characters stare in the camera and tell their tale of how they each killed a man and why the men “deserved” it. Another tells how she was framed by her drug-using boyfriend.
One man suffocated his daughter so her corpse could be sold as the “ghost wife” to a dead man, another beat his wife with a saxophone and another stalked his ex-girlfriend and abused her.
“Scumbags should be killed, killed, killed, killed, killed,” the characters sing in different dialects from around the country.
The creator of the flashy video goes by the pseudonym “Tuyouqin” and claims in her online bio to have graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music and to work in music production.