关键词: 《好东西》, 男性凝视, 女性凝望, 模糊性

Abstract:

This paper takes the 2024 "chick flick" Herstory as a case study to examine the practical pathways, structural tensions, and philosophical implications of the "female gaze" in Chinese "chick flick". As a product of cultural localization, this genre seeks to reconstruct the notion of the female gaze as a means to challenge the historically male-centered visual regime and to reconfigure narrative agency from a female perspective. However, such efforts often remain entangled in the cycles of symbolic violence and the alienating logic of consumerism, thereby limiting their critical and avant-garde potential. Herstory responds to this dilemma by adopting a dual strategy: on one hand, it employs a form of ironic deconstruction to subvert the "male gaze" as theorized by Laura Mulvey; on the other, it constructs an ethical perspective centered on sisterhood through a therapeutic mode of mutual gazing. In doing so, the film offers a incarnation of the female gaze and contributes to aesthetic and ethical innovation within the genre. Nevertheless, the film's bright, seamless, and almost trauma-free narrative tone tends to obscure the vulnerability and complexity of the subject, thus hindering deeper engagement with lived experiences. Future works may benefit from preserving the ambiguity and indeterminacy inherent in female experience, thereby opening up more generative spaces for the plural expressions of female subjectivity and the broader possibilities of human existence.

Key words: Herstory, Male Gaze, Female Gaze, Ambiguity