The Construction and Reconstruction of Female Characters in Postmodern Films: B for Busy and Her Story

Abstract

The paper investigates the reconstruction of women's screen images in postmodern cinema in the context of gender revolution shaped by postmodern philosophy. Based on the analysis of specific cinema works, such as the B for Busy and Her Story, the paper applies the semiotics of film, Foucauldian discourse theory, and Mulvey's gaze theory to explore how such works break down the classical myths of femininity, overturn the binarity, and restore the narrative and audiovisual femininity. The findings obtained reveals that the approach of deromanticizing and reversing the gaze of the filmmaker enhances the narrative role of females, but the mechanisms induced by the commercialization of cinema works result in placing women within symbolic traps, with feminism reduced to the level of commodities. The conclusion arrived at points out that, although postmodern cinema makes important contributions to reshaping femininity discourse, one must be careful not to be entrapped in the oppositional discourse embedded in the capital mechanism.