Analysis Of The Changes And Causes Of The Construction Of Female Media Image In People’s Pictorial(1950-1966)

In the study of media culture,the appearance of women in various events,news,advertisements and variety show is meaningful,and the multiple relationships assumed by their social roles convey complex and subtle cultural metaphors through the special narrative of modern media.In the changing times,how female media images are constructed requires questioning the social culture,moral ethics,and mainstream value system of that era.From 1950 to 1966,including from the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the Cultural Revolution,China’s social development entered a transitional stage and a stage of socialist exploration,with profound changes in politics,economy,and culture.The new social reality created a new way of constructing female media images in the socialist context.In the social context of the new era,how the female media image of the People’s Pictorial was constructed,how the construction method changed in the different social development periods of the transitional stage and the socialist exploration stage,and what social history causes exist behind them are the issues and core of this study.The People’s Pictorial,which was first published in July 1950,did not stop publication due to the changes in current events from 1950 to 1966.It provided a rare research sample for that special era,and the pictorial images were rich,covering all aspects of Chinese social production and life.It provided a possibility for studying the changes in the way and reasons why the People’s Pictorial constructed female media images under the changing themes of the times.This paper follows the semiotics paradigm and sociological paradigm in the study of media construction,combines the media ritual view and symbolic myth theory,and uses literature analysis,content analysis,text analysis and other research methods.Taking the People’s Pictorial as the research object,this paper selects 923 women centered images from 1950 to 1966 as research samples,Conduct a study on the changes in the way women’s media image is constructed in the People’s Pictorial(1950-1966),and finally analyze the reasons from two aspects:economic construction needs and women’s liberation practice needs.Through research and analysis,it can be concluded that in the construction of women’s media images in People’s Pictorial,its value orientation,theme content,visual aesthetics,and production methods all serve the visual grammar framework of "mainstream social ideology".As a passive subject,women’s media images exist in the field where political,economic,and cultural forces interact.The construction method mainly reflects the construction of female media images through image narration,showcasing people,objects,and events centered around women.The use of female bodies,including but not limited to facial features,figures,movements,and expressions,is used to construct a reproducible and symbolic female image.At the same time,the combination with other images in female images is used to achieve story representation,semantic clarity,order construction,and time continuity of spatial images,To achieve the audience’s ability to generate identification with the narrative through the perception of images.The People’s Pictorial incorporates reader actions into the national power framework by highlighting specific visual images of women,in order to serve the labor needs of social production at that time,and thus establish a new female image of "a new China that stands up".By analyzing the hidden rhetoric in the historical narrative of the People’s Pictorial(1950-1966),this article further points out that the construction and dissemination of female images in the People’s Pictorial play a role through image narrative and visual cultural rhetoric.It is too general to attribute it solely to political reasons,It reflects to some extent the winding and uncertain guiding role of mainstream ideology in the specific context of economic(promoting social production)and cultural(women’s liberation discourse)fields.Therefore,media,especially those with women as the main audience,should continuously adjust their own layout policies and convey gender concepts that are more in line with the inherent requirements of modern social life.Media users and the entire society should also understand the way the media constructs female media images,achieve symptomatic interpretation,strengthen their own media literacy,comprehensively understand female media images and female images as much as possible,and promote the benign construction of female images in the media.