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Following a different trajectory with the development of Western feminism, Chinese feminism shares a curious yet anticipated intersection with the popular sub-genre of Euro-American postfeminism, in the form of the chick culture, which encompasses a complete product line-up from books, films, to cosmetics and accessories. The Chinese chick culture targets a younger generation of women consumers by epitomizing the new visibility of strong, intelligent, sexually aggressive, and financially independent women in the post-feminist era of Chinese new socialist market economy. A product of both the globalized visual economy and interaction with Western postfeminism, Chinese postfeminism embodies a cultural renewal that firmly situates gender discourse within the dominant national discourse of economic development and consumerism.
This panel invites papers that explore diversified visual representations of postfeminism in Chinese language cinema. Topics of interest may include, but not limited to: the re-definition of female subjectivity in the era of Chinese post-feminism, how consumer choices facilitate the re-configuration of the “new woman” in the post-socialist China, how is women’s love and marriage mediated through modern technologies and tele-communications, the interaction between the consumerist postfeminism and the grassroot culture, how traditional gender values transform and are transformed by postfeminism, and how postfeminism problematizes China’s “economic miracle” when it remains aphasic to the vast population of women who live in the rural area.
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