The two films “My Sister” and “All about My Mother” focus on two kinds of family relations respectively, showing the female image as a mother in different family structures. The formation and development of “maternalism” as an idea were accompanied by the development and changes of feminism. At the beginning of the 20th century, maternalism was introduced into China from Europe, which set off a social trend of women’s liberation in China, and has deeply affected the development of gender society. This paper will summarize the theories related to maternalism and compare and analyze the two films by using case studies to show the struggles and confusion of contemporary women in family relationships and the transformation of their awareness, perception and identity of maternalism, which are revealed in two families and two relationships. On the other hand, it also shows the exploration and breakthrough of maternalism in contemporary narrative films, trying to reconcile the social repugnance and gender opposition brought about by excessive “feminism”, promoting the thinking and growth of men with women’s situation, starting from the demand of gender harmony, emancipating maternalism, and achieving the ethical harmony model of gender progress.
References
[1]
Hou, R. F. (2013). The Reconstruction of Maternalism and the Liberation of Women: A Comparison of “Maternal” and “Anti-Maternal” Literature by Yoko Tsushima. Jiannan Literature (Classical Education Court), 95+97.
[2]
Lu, S.-S. (2000). Chinese Modern and Contemporary Women’s Literature and Maternalism. Ph.D. Thesis, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
[3]
Mulvey, L., Beckman-Rogers, A., Van Den Oever, A., & Ke-Lok, W. (2022). Feminist Film Studies 40 Years after “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, A Triologue. Journal of Beijing Film Academy, 83-90.
[4]
Shen, D. (2005). New Developments of Western Narrative Theory since the 1990s. Contemporary Foreign Literature, 47-54.
[5]
Shen, Y. F. (2019). Seeing the World through Gender. Shanghai People’s Publishing House.
[6]
Wang, R. Y. (2019). On the Emergence and Influence of Maternalism in Modern China. History Teaching (Second Half of the Month), 67-72.
[7]
Wang, Y. (2015). An Analysis of Feminist Consciousness in Tsushima Yuuko’s Silent City. Mangzhong Literature, 51-52.
[8]
Yu, Y. L. (2021). My Sister: An Exploration of the New Feminist Narrative Strategy of Knowing the Male and Keeping the Female. Radio & TV Journal, 18-21.
[9]
Yu, Y. L. (2022). A Study of the Narrative Discourse of Female Consciousness in Early Chinese Cinema (1921-1936). Master Thesis, Shandong University.
[10]
Zhang, N. N. (2022). A Comparative Study of 20th Century Chinese and Spanish Feminist Growth Novels. Ph.D. Thesis, Jilin University.
[11]
Zhang, X. X., & Lyu, Y. M. (2003). The Ideological Trend of French Matriarchy during the End of the 19th Century and the Beginning of the 20th Century and An Analysis of Its Social Influences. Zhejiang Academic Journal, 115-120.
[12]
Zhu, T. (2021). The Study on Contemporary Western Thoughts of Caring Ethics. Ph.D. Thesis, Hubei University.
