The Carnivalesque of “Counter-Performance”: A Study on Audience Creative Resistance to Gender Narratives in Film Promotion from the Perspective of Pseudo-Drama Theory—Taking Nobody as an Example
Abstract
In the context of digital media, film promotion and distribution have gradually evolved into a highly planned "dramatic performance". This article takes the promotional practice of the 2025 summer animated film Nobody as a research case. By applying Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory framework, it examines how the "front stage presentation" constructed by the promotional team collapsed due to the occurrence of "deviant" behavior and further triggered the "counter-performance" spontaneously organized by the audience group. Through text analysis methods, the system collected and parsed 70 user comments on social platforms such as Weibo and Douban, as well as the official promotional content released simultaneously. The research finds that from the perspective of the theory of dramatization, the effectiveness of promotional performances is based on the coordination of internal collaboration within the performance team and the consensus of the situation. Once there is a break or contradiction during the performance, the audience may activate their subjective consciousness and instead become the dominant force in reconstructing the communication context. This research provides a new theoretical entry point for examining the brand communication crisis and the creative resistance of the audience in the digital age.
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