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Female Gaze of Chinese Lesbian Cinema in the Millennium
- 1 New York University
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Abstract
Film is believed to be a reproduction of a phallocentric system that marginalized, objectified, and essentialized women, with the male gaze as one of its most powerful tools. The female gaze has been pinned with the hope of deconstructing the male gaze and reestablishing the gaze, but so far it has no universally agreed-upon definition. In this paper, the author will conduct a textual analysis of two Chinese lesbian films, exploring and dissecting the female gaze on three levels: character, audience, and filmmaker. The author’s selection draws on definitions of lesbian cinema by Jackie Stacey and Teresa de Lauretis, who disagree on the correlation between the romance and sexuality of two female protagonists. Based on the author’s findings, the subject and the object in the female gaze do not form an absolute opposition because power is not fixed on either side but flows between the two. The female gaze in the lesbian cinema redefines the dualism inherent in the male gaze, and thus challenges psychoanalysis heterosexualism and the film industry dominated by patriarchy.
Keywords
Female Gaze, Lesbian Cinema, Chinese Cinema
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Cite this article
Li,A. (2024). Female Gaze of Chinese Lesbian Cinema in the Millennium. Communications in Humanities Research,29,272-280.
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