Gender Relation Through Drinking Culture

This study selected the Wine World magazine from 2006 to 2015 as a sampling box and used systematic sampling method to determine the 9th annual as samples,the 230 characters appeared in these 10 magazines as analytical sample.By using content analysis and critical discourse analysis,this paper reveals the gender power relations in the contemporary Chinese drinking culture through the study of the physical image,external image and social role of the male and female in the pictures of Wine World.As a kind of alcoholic beverage,wine will have chemical effects on human body after drinking,then affect people’s thoughts,feelings and behaviors.Wine and social culture,customs and all fields of the society thus have close contacts due to this particularity of wine,which ultimately led to the birth of the drinking culture.As a wine-themed mass media,on the one hand,Wine World can reflect the reality and disseminate contemporary Chinese drinking culture,on the other hand,with the prevalence of consumerism in today’s society,Wine World is also bound to reflect the characteristics of consumer society in a certain extent.Through content analysis and critical discourse analysis of the characters in the Wine World,I find that the traditional unequal gender culture still affects the drinking attitudes and behaviors of the two sexes.From the analysis,we can clearly see what Baudrillard has said as the male and female paradigm,which is composed of symbols.Because of the small difference in the taste of wine and terrible social consequences that can be brought after excessive drinking,it is safer and more effective to use some symbols,which always has nothing to do with wine and beyond the practical value but can meet people’s needs,to promote wine.The symbol is precisely the core of the consumer society described by Baudrillard:people’s consumption is symbolic consumption,that is,consumption of meaning.As a direct producer of wine-related symbols,Wine World shows us a whole set of the totally different discourse system and way of life of the two sexes,women should serve men and meet the sexual needs of men at the same time.Men have super power,ability and identity while women are belonging to men as private items.From the micro level,this study discusses the gender power relations in the drinking culture in contemporary China through the analysis of the Wine World.From the macro level,this research response to Baudrillard’s symbolic consumption theory as a specific practice.In the future,I think that the study of Chinese drinking culture should go deep into the study of multiple powers,which affect the production of the mass media,and the shift of the drinking culture embodied in real daily life is equally worthy of the attention of scholars.