Women The Mirror - The New Era Of Chinese Film Since The Shape Of The Female Identity

There are many images about the understanding of women, but the definition in this essay women's image is visual identity shaped especially by the film media and it has a unique social and cultural meaning and historical stage characteristics.Film in China has a history of 100 years. Chick flick movie is an important branch of Chinese film. The research to women's image has been an important topic, especially in the 21st century where women are concerned in particular. The statuses of women in society, living conditions and human rights have been greatly improved and women's image is increasingly becomes a hot topic. In recent years, various research methods such as feminism, narratology, semiotics, and psychoanalysis, etc. are applied to the study of film. However, the studies of women in films mostly stay at the surface of phenomenon, such as the women's image in film history, the female images' development process and the image's comparison under the gender perspective.Lacan is a famous contemporary psychoanalyst and a big thinker whose theory is original in French,. His Mirror Theory caused great effects in Humanities and thinking of art. Discussion about the mirror theory is people's "self" existence, nonexistence and the reason of false existence as well as the complex process while they are showed. His theory is based on "Imagination", "symbol" and "true" concept. Lacan's Mirror Theory coincides with the films, which provide a new perspective to study film media and the social film. This paper is based on the Mirror Theory and combines with the theory of Feminist, the theory ideology and so on. It takes the classic movies in the history of Chinese film as an example to analyze the women's image and talk about the shaping development of the female in the "New" movies. Finally, It studies the effects which the women's images have on the female subjects. Hopefully I am able to contribute my little strength for the study of female image and female identity in Chinese film.This thesis is divided into four chapters:The first chapter is the preamble; first I summerized the study of female image by the predecessors, and pointed out the inadequacies of current research and introduced my research method. Second, I introduced the concept of the film image, and Lacan's Mirror Theory, and tried to use Lacan's Mirror Theory of identity to analyze the relationship between film and women. Through analysis, I pointed out that the female image is the joint outcome of the four:the prototype of female characters, the film artists (directors, writers, photographers, film actor, etc.), the original film images of women (after the movie screen image), and the film audiences. Realistic women agreed to establish subjectivity under the influence of an imagined identity to female images on screen, and this subjectivity renewed, and deepened, and got the final confirmation under the influence of the symbolic order.In second chapter I explained the concept of "New" and analyzed the changes from origination of China movie to "New", pointing out the changes'infection on the status of women. My conclusion was that female was "Non-gendered" before "New" in China movie. The aim of creating female images is to demonstrate the commom fate of her class and group. So it is not the gender statue confirmed originally,but the class status.The third chapter is the most important chapter in my thesis. In this chapter, I analyzed the transformation trends of the female image in the New Period, and analyzed the background of transition. Besides, I explained the difficult transition process including family status, physiological status and social and cultural identity by analyzing the transition of female image in film. In this process, I tried to use the theory of ideology and theory of feminist to analyze the films directed by the male directors. At the same time, I analyzed and encouraged the women's position and feminist consciousness expressed in films directed by the women directors in order to objectively target the current influence of the female image in the New Period.Chapter IV is the last chapter. This chapter focuses on analyzing the effect which "New" Women has on the female subjects in reality. The conclusion is that Ideology is persuading the female to obey its order by the ideology calling on "Xie" type of female image and the "Oriental Wonder" of the resistance women in the movie defamiliarization. Because they consciously or unconsciously want to be "Xie-style" women, it consolidates the mainstream ideology objectively. But under the inspiring of chick flick movie, some women who have sense of against are lost in finding the identity of self.