“Nisu” Culture in Chinese Fandom Under the Rise of Female Gaze

A Word of Honor (2021) Case Study

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211011.040How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Fan Fiction, Gender, Sex, Transgender, Feminism

Abstract

After the online series Word of Honor aired in 2021, “nisu (泥塑)”, which refers to fans giving male characters traditional feminine traits in their second creations, became more frequent in Chinese fan culture. This “idiosyncrasy”, once marginalized by mainstream fans, seems to be going mainstream. This study attempts to take the image of Zishu Zhou in Word of Honor (2021) as a starting point to explain the emergence of this phenomenon from the perspective of female gaze. Its significance for the development of feminism and gender issues in China will be discussed as well. Online observation and semi-structure interview were both used in this study. 10 straight female fans of Zishu Zhou were interviewed to analyze their behavior, discourse and attitude. It is found that the rise of nisu culture on the one hand reflects the increasing awareness of female empowerment and the rebellion against reality. On the other hand, the stereotype of gender dualism has not been completely broken. Gender mobility still has a long way to go.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Qingning Lin
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/12
TI  - “Nisu” Culture in Chinese Fandom Under the Rise of Female Gaze
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 6th International Conference on Modern Management and Education Technology（MMET 2021）
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 229
EP  - 236
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211011.040
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211011.040
ID  - Lin2021
ER  -