Patriarchy, Mediated Desire, and Chinese Magazine Fiction

Abstract

In this research I examine the relationship between mass media and social change by studying women's magazine fiction in China before and after its implementation of the Four Modernization Policies in the late 1970s. The study focuses on the relationship between representations of women and the shifting ideological landscape from a feminist perspective. The findings reveal an important irony: As China moves towards relative political openness and economic modernization, old stereotypes of women as homemakers and caregivers increasingly reemerge in the media content. I argue that such representations of women have to be interpreted contextually. The image of the public-minded model worker in the 1960s masks the repression of personal aspirations in the name of the collective; the image of the family-oriented homemaker, mother, or nurturer from the late 1970s onward, is a dialectic response to the reemphasis of personal desires.

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