A Study On The Female Images In Contemporary Chinese Women 's Palace

The harem drama has aroused the attention of many people since its appearance, and the heated study and discussion about the harem drama is enduring. The harem drama The Legend of Zhen Huan broadcasted in 2012 has gotten wide praise because of its profound cultural connotation, compact story, critical theme style and elaborate producing. The main reason for the success of The Legend of Zhen Huan comes to the distinctive and abundant characters of female images and the multicultural connotation contained in them in The Legend of Zhen Huan, on which the comments about the harem drama vary differently. Take The Legend of Zhen Huan for example, its successful shaping on the female characters such as Zhen Huan, Hua Fei etc. created the high audience rating. O n the other hand, its rendering of women’s intrigues and publicity of the evil of human nature made it become the object of critical scholars. And the harem drama represented by The Legend of Zhen Huan has become a literary phenomenon in the affirmation and criticism. Therefore, the author will take the multiple female image s in The Legend of Zhen Huan as a starting point and apply the feminist theory to explore the aesthetic features and to create reasons of the female images in the harem drama, in order to make an objective co mment on the harem drama that has always been taking up huge amount of audience rating in recent years.This paper will analyze the female images in the harem drama from four main aspects.In the first chapter, there is a general introduction about the creation of the harem drama, including the definition of drama harem and the development of drama harem.In the second chapter, there is a cultural analysis on C hinese unique "harem culture" at first, the “harem” and its cultural connotation hidden behind it will be discussed from three aspects, the harem as the perspectives of the constructions, the harem as the paternalism and the harem as the women’s smokeless battlefield. According to the personalities of the characters and their destiny situation, the women in harem will be divided into five different types, traditional servile women, the women who represented the paternalism and manipulated power for personal ends, the pitiful victims, the “new women with self-consciousness” and the "Crazy" and "wicked " women.In the third chapter, the author would discuss the multiple aesthetic characteristics of the female images of the harem from the perspective of feminism. The harem women are not only "the others" under the traditional mechanism of gender, but also the women containing the weak light of the modern feminist consciousness. However, as the harem women who were living in the feudal society, their lives are doomed to be a tragedy even though they were living an extravagant life. The traditional male-chauvinism of the feudal society is the important reason for harem women’s status of “the others”. The women’s personal reliability, sexual repression and physical situation are the important manifestations of the female images as “the others” in the harem. The female images in the harem also containes the weak light of modern female consciousness, which is endowed by the contemporary creator. The female consciousness of the harem women was described from three aspects such as their "voice" spread out, the highlight of their friendship and the expressions of women’s desire. Harem women’s living circumstances, their dependence on the patriarchal society and the incompleteness of their revolt to the feudal society cause these harem women’s traged y. The love and marriage in feudal society is a kind of thespian existence perse. The inevitable tragic destiny and the alienation of humanity also exacerbated the tragic connotation of harem women.In the fourth chapter, the author would discuss the reasons for the shaping of the female images in the harem dramas from three aspects, the creator, the consumer culture and the audience. The reasons for the shaping of the female images in the harem drama are also related to the audience’s psychological satisfaction and the creator’s attitude. The combination of the consumer culture and patriarchy makes TV dramas take the male aesthetics as standard. Under the effect of the consumer culture mechanism, women and history have become available goods and the existence of symbolization. The women were treated as the object of being seen once again, becoming a fictional object and the satisfaction to the audience ’s multiple psychological requirements is one of the reasons for the shaping of the harem women images.