The emerging Chinese flâneuses in Lou Ye’s films in the 21st Century

Abstract

 This project studies the development of flâneuse representations in four selected films by Lou Ye since the turn of the 21st century. In recognizing the influence of consumerist capitalism and patriarchal order on the flâneuse embodiment of the female characters, this research reflects on the progress and limitations of women’s lived urban experiences in contemporary China undergoing drastic social changes associated with urbanization and marketization. The flâneur, albeit quintessentially masculine, has long been an archetypal figure of modern life in literary discussion. First elaborated by Charles Baudelaire to describe the modern man’s privileged leisure of aimless wandering and fleeting encounter-driven experience in the 19th-century Paris, it gains broader academic attention through Walter Benjamin’s writings in the early 20th century. As female empowerment advances and modernity globalizes towards the 21st century, scholars study flânerie with feminist perspectives, pointing out the limited presence of women in the discourse of flânerie since the concept’s inception, as well as beyond the geographical periphery, examining how flânerie has both continued and transformed in the urbanizing metropolises outside of the West, including those in East Asia. This study intends to extend this academic discussion to the contexts of women in 21st-century China through cultural analysis of Lou Ye’s cinematic works with a focus on the female characters by applying the conceptual framework of flânerie.