Militiawomen, Red Guards, and Images of Female Militancy in Maoist China

Abstract

Photographs and paintings of "iron girls," militia members, and other women performing hard labor are frequently discussed with regard to gender roles and gendered representation in Maoist China. This article sheds new light on the workings of Maoist-period propaganda images in general and photography in particular by showing how pictures of militant women such as female militia and Red Guards not only conveyed new gender models and norms but also functioned as allegories of class and the socialist nation. The female gender and the beauty of the depicted women were essential to this function. The images turned the harsh realities of revolutionary struggle and military conflict into aesthetic experiences that were consumed by female and male audiences alike. By unpacking the personal histories of some of the women in the photographs, I draw attention to the experiences, desires, and conflicts subsumed in the propagandistic function of the images.

The Rewriting of Eileen Changs Female Characters and Its Significance in the Film Love After Love

“…Dai Jinhua, China's leading scholar of contemporary feminist film criticism, once pointed out that women are facing an inescapable lure of image-making conventions: "A woman who is made up as a man and becomes a hero as a man becomes the most important (if not the only) mirror image of what it means to be a woman in mainstream culture." [5] This image of a woman made up as a man was expressed as early as Eileen Chang's contemporaries as the image of revolutionary women who "have highaspiring minds, they love their battle array, not silks and satins" [10]. In the cultural context of contemporary China, the image of Mulan has returned and flourished, and is still profoundly influencing the ideas of female creators in portraying women's images.…”