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Oppositional Gaze and Gender Power Reconstruction: Feminist Analysis of Chinese Female Fans' Real Person Slash (RPS) Cultural Practices

Author(s)

Yuting Song

Affiliation(s)

College of Liberal Arts, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, Anhui, China

Abstract

In 1975, Laura Mulvey published Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, introducing the "Male Gaze" theory to analyze film/TV media, arguing female characters are objectified as targets of male gaze. Inheriting Freud's scopophilia concept, the theory highlights women's passive position and loss of gaze rights due to gender in modern media. During the 1990s feminist second wave, black feminists critiqued its implicit racial bias. Bell hooks (born Gloria Watkins) redefined feminism in Black Looks: Race and Representation, integrating popular culture critique with feminist media analysis and proposing the "Oppositional Gaze." She challenged Mulvey's focus on white heterosexual male gaze, emphasizing its neglect of race-class-gender intersectionality. Bell posited gaze as a resistance tool for marginalized groups to actively interpret visual culture and subvert dominant power structures. Her theory prioritizes individual subjective agency, advocates diverse group perspectives, and opposes monolithic gazing to foster visual culture inclusivity. As Chinese female fans' RPS (Real Person Slash) practices align with the Oppositional Gaze theory, this paper analyzes how marginalized audiences employ gaze as resistance in contemporary cultural contexts.

Keywords

Feminism; Popular Culture; Fan Culture; Real-Person Slash (RPS); Oppositional Gaze; Chinese Pop Culture

References

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