Women on and Behind Chinese Entertainment Television

Women on and Behind Chinese Entertainment Television


In December 2017, National Treasure ([NT] also known as The Nation’s Greatest Treasures; 国家宝藏), a new Chinese variety television show that tells the stories of prestigious cultural relics selected from top Chinese museums, premiered on China’s state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV). Combining short historical stage dramas played by A-list Chinese celebrities and documentary interviews with museum curators as well as vivid behind-the-scenes stories introduced by ordinary Chinese people, the program fostered innovative visual storytelling and became an unprecedented success, especially among young Chinese people (Cong, 2017). It was not only seen as subverting “the stereotypical impression of China’s creative industries’ lack of creativity” (Peng, 2021, p. 3), but was also nationalistically celebrated by China’s mainstream media as “a unique TV show that can only be produced by Chinese people” (“Promoting National Treasures,” 2019). Importantly, NT’s great success in innovation and creativity was attributed to Yu Lei, the chief director and producer of the show, who won praise for her creation of “a new form of Chinese documentary-style variety show” with female storytelling that makes cold cultural relics alive and warm again (Liu, 2018; Zhang, 2018).To get more news about women in ancient china, you can visit shine news official website.

With the popularity of the show in China, Yu Lei (who, as discussed below, is referred to as the “author” of NT), appeared on the cover page of Women of China, one of the most influential national women’s magazines in China. Established by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1930s, Women of China is one of the key official outreach magazines of the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), the largest women’s rights organization in China that plays “the function of both NGO and national policy mechanism” (Zhang, 2001, p. 173). As stated on its website, the magazine acts as “the headquarters of the party’s women’s advocacy,” promoting Chinese women’s success stories and leading public opinion on the women’s movement in China. In this cover story, Yu Lei and her female team members’ professionalism, creativity, and hard work were repeatedly highlighted (Liu, 2018). One year later, when NT’s second season premiered on CCTV, the magazine featured another story about Yu Lei entitled “The ‘detachment of women’ behind National Treasure.” This is a visual account of the predominantly female production team, including directors, writers, camerawomen, coordinators, etc., behind the program. The group portrait of NT’s female production team highlights a rise of female professionals in the Chinese television industry, which challenges previous assumptions of Chinese television as a male-dominated domain both on-screen and in production (e.g., Allen, 2020; Yau, 2020).

The new focus on female television production, female authorship, and the cultural legitimation of women and their stories on Chinese television invites consideration about several interrelated issues around the processes of paratextual construction of media authors, and of female authorship in particular; the ideologies that inform such constructions; and the extent to which a female producer like Yu Lei can exercise meaningful agency. To address these questions, we combine a textual analysis of NT (CCTV, seasons 1–3, 2017–2020)—a female-authored Chinese cultural variety show—with a critical feminist analysis of its promotional paratexts, including production and reception discourses.1 This approach is inspired by the feminist film scholarship of Grant (2001), who argues that the examination of female authorship should move beyond a formal analysis of the “primary text” (e.g., a film or a television program) and contextualize the discussions within production, distribution, and reception discourses. We analyze 68 interview articles between 2017 and 2021 in Chinese mainstream media, including China Daily, China News Service, Shanghai Observer, Beijing News, Guangming Daily, Women of China, Women Voice, Xinhua News Agency, etc. These articles comprise prestigious media discourses that contribute to the cultural legitimation of a television text. In examining these discourses, which work as a cultural barometer for NT and similar programs, this article presents a critical feminist analysis of female authorship that includes representations of women in television texts and the cultural framing of female creators and their productions.

After an overview of Chinese television in transition and its relationship to women, this article examines how Yu Lei’s female authorship has been constructed by NT’s paratexts, looking at both the promotional materials and the reception discourses. It then turns to the problematic aspects of how this female authorship is framed, arguing that the framing serves to promote neoliberal postfeminist ideas of women’s empowerment, frequently invoking notions of individual empowerment, autonomy, and personal agency (Evans, 2008; Thornham & Feng, 2010; Yang, 2011; Yang, 2020). Furthermore, the paratexts around Yu Lei and NT are bound up with current iterations of official neonationalist ideology. At the same time, through a critical examination of the female representations on the show, we argue that Yu Lei’s position as a woman in a male-dominated industry who has substantial visibility in Chinese mainstream media and enjoys some authority over a TV production still constitutes noteworthy if only partial agency.