Abstract
Since China’s initial encounter with Western modernity at the turn of the twentieth century, the yearning for national empowerment has manifested itself in cinematic images of sportswomen. The combination of the visual medium and athletic women characters, both imported as foreign icons of modern civilization, helped to nurture popular culture, political activism and new social identities in China. Ranging from 1910s to 2020s, the perseverant sportswomen on screen have addressed hot-spot issues and provided positive role models for a large audience. Through exploration of three key works—China’s first sport film Queen of Sports (1934), the award-winning The Drive to Win (1981) of the Reform era, and the box-office hit You Only Live Once (2024), this paper argues that the evolution of sportswomen in Chinese cinema exemplifies the on-going construction of modernity narratives in the matrix of time, space and cross-cultural communication.
Presenters
Jing YangProfessor, Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangdong, China
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Sportswoman, Chinese cinema, National empowerment, Popular culture, Modernity narrative
