Narrative Deviance and Discursive Discipline: Structural Mechanisms of Audience Resistance to Female-Centric Storytelling
Abstract
This study focuses on the structural misinterpretation of the "equal rights grammar" in female-dominated film and television works in the mainstream context, focusing on their expression strategies such as de-romanticized emotional writing, feminine narratives and decentralized male characters, as well as why they are frequently labeled with negative labels such as "overly emotional" and "politically correct" after entering the mainstream vision. Research shows that such misinterpretations are not accidental cognitive biases, but rather a systematic rejection of heterodox narrative forms and the right to gender expression within mainstream reception mechanisms. This article uses three representative female-led works on the Douban platform—Like A Rolling Stone, Her Story, and Barbie—as case studies. The study collected over 600 user reviews (including over 300 highly interactive and over 300 negative ones) and applied qualitative discourse analysis to identify and categorize offensive language directed at the "forms of expression" themselves. The study found that criticism often focuses on the denial of the "legitimacy" of expression rather than substantive disputes over content or subject matter, highlighting the "cognitive exclusion" mechanism inherent in the structure of gender discourse. This study calls for reflection on the boundaries of "effective expression" in the contemporary media context, questioning the gender biases in mainstream narrative evaluation criteria and expressibility, and exposing the structural repression that women's expression still faces in public cultural spaces.
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