Gender and Cultural Imagination - On the Death of the Heroine in “The Grandmaster”

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.112How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Chinese Martial Arts Film; Feminism Film Theory; Female Warrior Image; The Grandmaster

Abstract

The Grandmaster by Wong Kar-wai is a classic Martial Arts film in the 21st century. The ending of Gong Er in the film inherits the narrative convention that the female hero disappears at the end of the story in Chinese Martial Arts films. This narrative feature, on the one hand, continues the masculine discourse construct of Chinese Martial Arts films that treats female images as sacrificial victims [masculine narrative, that is burying the misfortunes of an era through the disappearance of female characters]. On the other hand, due to the high resemblance between Gong Er and the traditional Chinese image of the Divine Woman, her disappearance symbolizes the loss of ritual society and the sadness of not being able to get what one wants, while metaphorically representing the cultural anxiety and spiritual dilemma of the present generation.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hong Yue
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - Gender and Cultural Imagination - On the Death of the Heroine in “The Grandmaster”
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 613
EP  - 618
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.112
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.112
ID  - Yue2022
ER  -