Abstract
This chapter will examine how director, actor, scriptwriter and popular blogger Xu Jinglei has, in her film roles, both in front of and behind the camera, as well as in her public persona, provided Chinese society with multiple examples of women who defy traditional stereotypes of Chinese womanhood. These stereotypes include the concept of the “good wife and wise mother” which continues to pervade contemporary Chinese views of women. This chapter will undertake a comparative analysis of the roles of Xu Jinglei’s characters in her films, her roles as director and scriptwriter, and her personal life, particularly her relationships and fertility issues.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example, Meyer, R. (2005). Ruan Ling-yu: The Goddess of Shanghai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
- 2.
An example of this is Redmond, S., and Holmes, S. (Eds.). (2007). Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, which has only one chapter on Asian cinema: Wang, Y. (2007). A star is dead: A legend is born: Practicing Leslie Cheung’s posthumous fandom. In Redmond, S. and Holmes, S. (Eds.). (2007). Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader (pp. 326–340). Los Angeles: Sage.
- 3.
For more discussion of the representation of marriage in Letter from an Unknown Woman, see Vanderstaay, L. (2010). A Textual Analysis of Female Consciousness in Twenty-First Century Chinese Women Directors’ Films (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
- 4.
In the Ophüls film, the heroine is named Lisa.
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Vanderstaay, L. (2019). Subverting the ‘Good Wife and Wise Mother’: The Roles and Public Persona of Xu Jinglei. In: Cai, S. (eds) Female Celebrities in Contemporary Chinese Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5980-4_4
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