Research On Xu Jinglei’s Films From The Feminism Perspective

Since its appearance in the 1970 s, feminism film theory has become a far-reaching artistic theory and research method in the current film art field. Because feminism is naturally political and film is a popular art form with a widespread influence, the combination of the two achieves a closer contact with real life. More and more scholars applied the feminism film theory to the study of Chinese films. Moreover, in recent years, more and more audience consciously appreciated films from the feminism perspective.As a filmmaker with stardom, Xu Jinglei is director, screenwriter, producer and actor in film creation and her creative ideas are identical to the feminism perspective. Her films have always been concerned about the fate of females and are good at female role shaping. The six films by Xu Jinglei achieved the cumulative box office of over RMB 500 million and won the affirmation of the market and several major film awards. Therefore, research on Xu Jinglei’s films from the feminism perspective has certain significance on film art creation, cultural studies and sociological studies.This paper is divided into three parts. Chapter I Gender Identity: Feminism and Theme of Xu Jinglei’s Films found that Xu Jinglei’s films always discussed two important artistic themes, i.e. “identity” and “body”, through analysis and summarization, thereby constructing gender identity of female images with feminine colors. Chapter II Feminism Perspective: the Narrative Strategy of Xu Jinglei’s Films found that Xu Jinglei’s films took the female perspective to expand the film’s narrative strategy and highlighted female consciousness by using film language to construct female right to speak and setting gender relations against the patriarchal gender pattern. Chapter III Feminism in the Consumer Society: Cultural Connotation in Xu Jinglei’s Films analyzed the current situation and difficulties of feminism through the real world, film texts and film industry with consumerism as the starting point. Starting from cultural studies and based on the feminism film theory, this paper aims to use the research methods of art sociology and artistic culture theory to analyze the contents and semiology of film texts, studied the female consciousness in films, explored how to effectively organize it into film language and how to dig out the connotation in the social context and cultural context behind the films.