Gaze, Boundary, and Dehistoricization: Mechanisms of Gender Power in Film Review Discourse
Abstract
This study employs Bourdieu's theory of cultural production and Gieryn's theory of boundary-work as its analytical framework, integrating LDA topic modelling with Critical Discourse Analyse (CDA) to systematically examine how film review systems consistently produce and reproduce gender power structures at the discursive level, drawing on a corpus of 1,531 film review articles from the authoritative review platform (a website) RogerEbert.com. This study concludes three core mechanisms: first, with the dual operation of the "affirmative gaze" and "counter-gaze," women remain positioned as objects to be watched and defined even within ostensibly progressive discourse; second, a double standard of dehistoricization systematically obscures women's efforts and contributions in film history, instead, it simultaneously and continuously "enchants" male creators; third, the categorical boundary between "women's films" and "mainstream films" naturalizes male experience as the universal standard, degrading "women's films" to a specialized category below "mainstream films." These mechanisms demonstrate that film review discourse functions not only as a site of aesthetic criticism but as an important mechanism for constructing gender boundaries within the industry, continually reinforcing existing gender power structures within the field of cultural production.
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