Exploring Feminist Rights in Post-Socialist Shanghai: A Rights-Based Re-Reading of Peng Xiaolian’s Shanghai Women

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_26How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Feminist cinema; Female gaze; Chinese Civil Code 2001; Property rights; Audience reception; Policy influence; Peng Xiaolian

Abstract

This proposal investigates how Peng Xiaolian’s 2002 melodrama Shanghai Women bridges feminist film language and debates on marriage, property, and custody that surrounded China’s 2001 Civil Code revision. Treating the film as a critical case, the study asks three questions: first, how its camera work and story devices communicate bodily and economic autonomy; second, how viewers across press, online forums, and focus-group discussion interpret those signals; and third, whether the same ideas surface in legislative records from the reform period. A qualitative, multi-method design underpins the inquiry. Stage one conducts a scene-by-scene reading that logs angles, framing, and dialogue linked to rights claims. Stage two gathers and thematically codes audience commentary from 2002 to 2025, enabling a time-layered view of reception. Stage three compiles policy drafts, meeting minutes, and media reports to map when key legal terms appear. Cross-analysis then links the three data streams through a timeline matrix. Beyond filling a scholarly gap on pre-social-media cinema, the project offers an adaptable coding framework for connecting cultural texts with policy conversation. Expected outcomes include a detailed map of the film’s rights discourse, evidence of public uptake, and guidance for researchers and advocates assessing artistic impact on legal change.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiajun Yang
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - Exploring Feminist Rights in Post-Socialist Shanghai: A Rights-Based Re-Reading of Peng Xiaolian’s Shanghai Women
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 225
EP  - 233
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_26
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-511-9_26
ID  - Yang2025
ER  -