The “Bossy CEO” Stories and Sexism with Chinese Characteristics

Abstract

With Chinese television transforming itself from a “mainstream culture” that endeavors to engage with serious intellectual debates into a digital terrain of entertainment, TV dramas have become a dreamland where fantasies reign. The popular “bossy CEO” narrative is one such manifestation of hypergamic fantasies. Targeting the young female audience that has emerged as the primary consumer of drama serials, the “bossy CEO” dramas, mostly adapted from popular web fictions, take place in a wide variety of settings, ranging from companies and schools to the harems of imperial China, but are surprisingly similar in their essential constituents, which denote reliance on men and worship of strength or even despotism. The male protagonist, a wealthy young member of the business elite or a success in another social arena, suddenly falls madly in love with the heroine and expresses his admiration and affection forcefully and in a brusque manner—to the extent that he could be suspected of trying to force himself upon her. The paper focuses on critical readings and audience reception of a number of TV dramas and web dramas in recent years with this distinct narrative pattern. Drawing on data collected from online commentaries and focus group discussions with TV viewers, it explores the ongoing negotiations surrounding gender politics and subjectivity in television’s reproduction of social power relations. In particular, it delves into the dynamic relationship between the state’s agenda of strengthening the national through the Father and the proliferation of “sexism with Chinese characteristics” in popular entertainment.