Presentation Schedule
Women in Revolution: Nationalism and Femininity in Song of Youth and Lust, Caution (84514)
Session Chair: Gayle Nunley
Wednesday, 30 October 2024 16:20
Session: Session 3
Room: Room 110
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
This paper examines how nationalist ideologies have shaped cultural conceptions of womanhood in China over time.This analysis is premised on a distinction between Chinese and Western discourses of “woman”, indicating an alternative trajectory in which the conception of gender diverges from the West.Two Chinese-language films, Song of Youth (Qing chun zhi ge, 1959) and Lust, Caution (Se jie, 2007), will figure in my analysis because both films are adapted from novels by female authors (Yang Mo and Eileen Chang) and organized around female characters. The former film was made during China's early socialist era, while the latter, as a transnational Sinophone production, reflects China's economic boom in the new millennium. Meanwhile, the distinction between the two original novels aligns with shifting trends in the discursive construction of femininity in China, which oscillated between woman as a political subject (funü) and woman as a sexual subject (nüxing). Situating this dichotomy into narratives of Chinese women, this paper argues that representations of women in socialist Chinese cinema abstain from the issue of sexuality because female characters are largely portrayed through their spiritual, psychical, and intellectual development, with Song of Youth as a salient example. In Lust, Caution, however, the female image emerges from a decoupling of the personal from the political.Such an approach to female embodiment conforms to neither the submissiveness of funü, which is associated with masculinist nationalism, or revolutionary ethics. Rather, this approach equates femininity with the sexuality of nüxing, neutralizing the docile subject's ideological interpellation.
Authors:
Jiyu Zhang, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Jiyu Zhang is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China
See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress