The Pastoralized Representation of Rural Life in Short Videos

Abstract

Short videos often present rural life through natural scenery, traditional food, family gatherings, and slow daily routines. These images create a peaceful and attractive countryside, but they show only part of rural reality. This paper examines how rural life is turned into a pastoral image through visual selection, editing, music, repeated story forms, and platform preferences. It discusses how physical labor is made pleasant to watch while fatigue, risk, unstable income, and production costs receive less attention. It also explains how pastoral content responds to viewers’ need for emotional comfort and supports advertising, livestreaming, tourism, and product sales. Repeated images of fields, old houses, handmade food, and close families can reduce rural diversity and make certain lifestyles appear more authentic than others. Ordinary workers, migrant families, caregivers, low-income households, and people facing illness or limited public services are less visible. This selective representation may lead viewers to treat hardship as simple living and heavy labor as a personal choice. The paper argues that rural short videos can retain their visual appeal while giving more space to labor conditions, modern rural life, different social groups, and the boundary between daily experience and commercial performance.