Decipher The Construction Code Of A Young Girl's Myth

By using a comparasion study method, this paper attampts to analyse the construction and revision of Anne Frank's changing images in the mass media, thereby interprets the mainstream gender culture symptoms contained in the myth of this young girl.The Diary of Anne Frank written by the Jewish girl Anne Frank has received posthumous fame for her sparkling descriptions of human spirit in the writing. As time goes by, Anne Frank has become the symbol of the six million Jewish victims and been reduced into a universized saint worshiped by the people all over the world. Having focused on such a adaptation and cultural phenomena, this thesis aims at analysing the construction codes of this young girl's myth by three parts below:Chapter one re-reads the original diary texts, including version A, B and C, trying to find out the roots of Anne's innocent icon formation. I think that Anne reconstructed herself, and made her voice heard through rewriting and editing her original diary, so her image in the texts was very complicated and versatile. However, her father re-edited the diary a lot on the base of Anne's own edition, then made a monophyletic, simplified and idealized interpretation of Anne Frank and her diary become possible.Chapter two re-examines the construction of Anne's screen image in the 1959 Hollywood film by using queer theory and feminist film theory. Her image as a innocent victim was shaped during a romance in the classical film version and turned out to represent a ideal femininity which means goodness, optimism and forgiveness.Chapter three mainly tries to make a critical interpretation of Anne's image in the new era. Apparently her icon figure was revised by a historicized and Judaized representation in the TV version, but actually it turned out to be a another stereotype representation. Eventually, this young female writer with strong female subject consciousness is still trapped in the power network of the mainstream gender culture, and somehow the dilemma of her desire's representation hasn't been settled down yet.