Visual Modernity of Contemporary Chinese Women from the Movie Full River Red
Abstract
This article explores the visual modernity of contemporary Chinese women reflected in the image of geisha in the movie Full River Red. This paper mainly uses Laura Mulvey's gaze theory and Foucault's power theory, combined with the female image of geishas in the movie, to explore the social relations embodied in Chinese women's visual modernity. In the movie, a total of eight scenes of female scenes appears. There will be a flow of female power in every scene, and selected two representative plots for analysis. In the process of women going from being powerless to having power in the movie, it can be found that gaze has changed into another kind of "make themselves seen". Recently, a large number of female audiences have become viewers and the flow of power corresponds to the change of female power in real life. In general, based on the female cases in the film, and then to dissemination and reception of images and the changes in the production of image meanings and the other, discusses the relationship between this visual experience and Chinese female subjectivity.
References
- J. Elkins: "Visual Research: A Doubtful Introduction", translated by Xin Lei, Nanjing: Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House, 2010, pp. 2.
- C. S. Li, Four Topics of Visual Culture Research: Visualization, Visuality, Visual System and Visual Modernity, Literary Review, No, 05, 2014, PP. 17-24. DOI:10.16566/j.cnki.1003-5672.2014 .05.026.
- H. Foster, Preface to Vision and visuality, Visual culture: Critical concepts in media and cultural studies, 2006, pp. 116-119.
- J. Crary, Techniques of the Observer[M], Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 1990, pp. 16-17.
- L. Mulvey, Visual pleasure and narrative cinema[M]//Visual and other pleasures. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1989, pp.14-26.
- Q. Wu, Visuality and Visual Culture——The Genealogy of Visual Culture Research,Literature and Art Research, No ,01, 2006, pp. 84-96.
- M. Foucault, Society must be defended [M], Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1999, pp. 27-28.
- L. Pang, The distorting mirror: Visual modernity in China[M], University of Hawaii Press, 2007, pp. 102-130.
- H. F. Tang, Transparency: Chinese Visual Modernity (1872—1911)[M], Life·Reading·New Knowledge Joint Publishing, 2022, pp. 240.
- O. F. Li, S. D. Dong, Let’s Talk About the “Head” Again—Once Lu Xun’s Thoughts on National Character, Modern Chinese Literature Journal, No, 01, 2010, pp.11-19.