Objectification, Bodily Revenge, and National Identity
Refashioning ‘Comfort Women’ in Chinese Cinema
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12349161 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pingfan Zhang (0009-0002-1060-9971, Zhejiang Gongshang University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 727-744 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Asian Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1035-7823 • E-ISSN: 1467-8403 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10357823.2023.2289638 |
| OpenAlex | W4389539514 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 23 |
Considering comfort women as both a contested object of knowledge and a productive figure, this article examines the representational endeavours undertaken by Chinese filmmakers in the past three decades. Specifically, it analyses three fictional films – How Many Levels are Hells (1992), Zhenzhen (2002), and City of Life and Death (2009) – which were produced in disparate socio-political and historical circumstances. Central to this article is a careful examination of women's violated bodies on screen that have aroused nationalistic sentiments and concomitantly unsettled the very nationalism produced under the rubric of an ingrained masculinist public culture. The article highlights how these cinematic representations address the thorny problems of commodification and objectification of women's sexuality, the crisis of survival faced by former comfort women, and the universal suffering of comfort women regardless of their nationalities. In a broader sense, by interrogating the comfort women issue as a purveyor of knowledge, the article contributes to the film studies of female sexuality and the memorialisation of World War II in contemporary China
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · China · Commodification · Human sexuality · Identity (music · Movie theater · National identity · Nationalism · Objectification · Political science · Politics · Sexualization · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Body, subject & power in China
Hooligan Sparrow
Chinese Femininities/Chinese MasculinitiesA Reader
The Stranger and the Chinese Moral Imagination
The Comfort Women
The Making of "The Rape of Nanking"
Women Through the Lens
The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism
The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars
Discomforting Knowledge
Popular geopolitics of Chinese Nanjing massacre films
Savage Irony
Writing about Atrocity
Contested Images of Rape
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |