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Wen 丨 brain polar body
Recently, the women's topics and women's marketing-related events that appeared in the Chinese market in the first half of 2021 were arranged into a table, and one particularly interesting thing was found:
In terms of mass culture consumption, women's likes and dislikes are a metaphysics.
For example, in a drama with a theme that is popular with female audiences, the protagonist may not be a woman.
For example, the mother-daughter relationship of the Spring Festival file "Hello, Li Huanying" made Jia Ling leap to become the highest-grossing female director in the world; the recent small-scale film and television drama "Royal Gifts of Small Servants", which focused on the heroine "Kao Gong On the Shore", two female screenwriters also received attention; overseas director Kate Herron's male hero drama "Rocky" won a Douban and IMDb rating of 9.3 as soon as it was released... However, programs such as "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves 2" and "Listening to Sister" that focus on creating a female concept have only received about 5 points of embarrassment from Douban.
For another example, whether the appearance conforms to male aesthetics is not the key to causing public opinion conflicts.
Many brands that advocate women to break the "white and thin" aesthetic have made good marketing cases, the "noboby is no body" reputation of the underwear brand "inside and outside" is full, and the "Victoria's Secret", which has always advocated sexiness, also invites women from multiple fields to shoot the main vision. However, this does not mean that things that meet the aesthetics of men cannot be done, and the white and thin heroine of the TV series "Si Teng" also brushed a wave of good feelings because of the love of female fans; the online bloggers who claimed that "wearing Lolita/jk uniforms/Hanfu are beautiful men" have been strongly opposed by many women.
Also, asking female spokespersons may not necessarily please female consumers, but removing female spokespeople will definitely offend female consumers, female talk show actors endorse storms "understand everything"; male actors can become "June girlfriends" (the male protagonist in "The Day It Becomes You"), female stars sell "Ji Circle Gangster" people are called "greasy"...
See here readers may have been confused, women are too difficult to please!! What can be done to make women satisfied!
The frequent overturning of "her marketing" reflects the high degree of attention to female themes after the gradual awakening of women's consciousness, and the sense of smell of capital is often the most acute, but the lack of theory and method, the female group can only emotionally express when feeling uncomfortable and offended.
This has also made many mass media, fast-selling brands, and companies eager to penetrate the women's market at a loss for how to do women's marketing and women's content.
In fact, these seemingly isolated cases all have a common feature, that is, to break the male gaze and call for the female gaze.
<h2>Escape from the Golden Wire Cage: Women who don't want to be stared at</h2>
Before thinking about "what exactly do women want", it is necessary to answer the question of what women do not want.
Women don't want a single aesthetic of "having to be sexy and obedient/white skinny", and many actresses, including Scarlett Johansson, are trying to tear off the label of over-sexualizing female characters;
Women do not want to be "dispensable and tool-free people", and hope to see female characters in the film and television series who can take on the indispensable characters to promote the development of the plot;
Women don't want "female competition", and many female dramas always like to sell mother-in-law contradictions, plastic sister flowers, the three big fights in the main room and other dog blood plots...
For a long time, the above phenomena were the main forms of media communication constructed by the male gaze.
"Male gaze" is a term coined by film critic Laura Malvey in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) to refer to seeing women and the world through a male perspective and perspective. In the male gaze, women's feelings, thoughts, and egos are not important, serving only male viewing.
An intuitive criterion for judging is that the plot will not be significantly affected by removing female characters from the film. With the increase of various screens such as televisions, computers, and smartphones, the "male gaze" has also moved from the big screen to popular culture. The visual carrier of the screen has become the "golden wire cage" created by men for women.
The feeling of being gazed at is uncomfortable, for example, heterosexual men are reluctant to look at nudes who are also males, and women are naturally increasingly dissatisfied with this masculine single gaze.
If the film and television dramas and brand marketing are passed on to women, or the product of the male gaze of the last century, then the overturning car is absolutely not unjust.
<h2>The Elephant's Exodus: A History of Female Media Exploration</h2>
There is a story that if you lock up a baby elephant from a young age and it can't break free of the chain, then even if it becomes an elephant, it will think that it "can't break free".
The mass media reflects the dominant social value standard of a society, when it has been under the male gaze for a long time, once women try to establish their own media, it is also not achieved overnight, but has experienced a struggle and exploration to lift the "heart demon".
In the late 19th century, the promoters of women's political participation recognized that a necessary condition for women to win the right to vote was to have their voices heard. Breaking the image of women created by the media under the male gaze was an important direction in the 1960s and 1970s.
The golden silk cage was pried open, but because the male norm had become the only and absolute norm at that time, women would unconsciously adopt male discourse when shooting film and television works and telling stories.
For example, China has a very strong lineup of female directors, and there are dozens of female directors who have directed more than two films and are still creating, but for a long time before, the works of female directors, whether it is the selection of materials, stories, lens language, etc., there is no obvious gender difference with male directors.
Catherine Bigelow, the first woman in Oscar history to win the Best Director Award, won the award," "Bomb Disposal Force," a predatory, heroic, masculine war film.
At this stage, "being like men" is a mainstream choice for female creators.
Well, in the present, we will find that more and more women are beginning to express a strong feminine attitude, eager to show a different side from the male perspective. What gives women the power to change?
Perhaps the most critical reason is that the medium has changed.
On the one hand, the carrier of the medium has changed. The changes in digital technology and media forms have forced the traditional media production model to change, the cinema has become ubiquitous, and the threshold for women's creation is also decreasing.
In addition to female directors, there are many female producers, female photographers, and female screenwriters in the film and television industry, all of which provide new choices for the film to produce a new story structure and expression. Instead of relying solely on a single system that is more male-friendly and based on huge investments, it can be more diverse and fully autonomous.
In addition, the form of output of the medium has changed. The "IP-style" integration of books, cartoons, audio and video games has become the mainstream trend of the cultural industry in the network context, forcing the transformation of the traditional industrial model.
In recent years, many film and television dramas and games are original derivative works by female authors, female cartoonists, etc. Only by understanding the connotation of the story can we maximize the value of IP, and further promote women's participation and voice in film and television dramas and other industries.
More importantly, the relationship between the medium and the audience has also changed. The active search and viewing of the audience determines the success or failure of the content product, and the user can also participate in the production and dissemination of the content through the remote control, the pulling progress bar, the bullet screen, the creative editing and other forms, then the one-way output and high-handed characteristics of the traditional film and television industry disappear.
The real-time online of social networks has also prompted people to prefer to talk and spread after watching movies, whether it is writing videos or liking and scoring, and women who prefer to communicate and share have become the key to the success of a film and television series and commercial marketing planning. The content gazed at by women naturally makes it easier to narrow the psychological distance with female audiences and gain more recognition and commercial value.
It is the transformation of technology and media that has opened up the once closed arms of the world for the female gaze.
<h2>Open another window, what does mass culture do under the gaze of women? </h2>
How will the female gaze reconstruct the relationship between the medium and the audience? It's something that creators need to rethink. It can be discussed from three perspectives:
1. How do women see themselves?
As mentioned earlier, the female gaze is a new perspective that is different from the male gaze, has a female gender consciousness, and is skeptical of the patriarchal discourse system, so helping women break the stereotypical female image created by the previous media and tell stories that are ignored by the male gaze and are sexy will gain a lot of good feelings.
For example, in recent years, romantic comedies produced by men (also known as chick flicks) always focus on romance and love, it is difficult to sell, if the heroine only pursues love will be ridiculed "love brain", but the work that emphasizes women's professionalism and professionalism will be respected.
In the Star Wars live-action TV series directed by the female director, the female character Omela subverts the stereotype of the perfect wife, generous, enthusiastic, quiet, but can also shoot and fight, with a three-dimensional and complex personality. The focus on women's plight is also different from the way men gaze. Female director Ackerman's films focus on the bondage of the family to women, and some chinese actresses have gained a very positive reputation among women because they play women in domestic violence.
2. How do women view men?
Frankly, under the male gaze, it doesn't matter how women perceive men. Interestingly, when the perspective is reversed under the female gaze, the male also becomes less important.
You can break stereotypes and violate male discipline. For example, in the Piano Lesson movie, known as the "origin of the female gaze," Ida McGrath betrays her new husband, Stewart, and falls in love with her neighbor George Baynes through the piano.
The presence of men has changed from active to passive, and is more able to satisfy the pleasure of female audiences. For example, let men be watched, showing exposed bodies, without actively promoting the plot; or let male characters as the motivation of the heroine, stage the "beauty saves the hero" drama, which can be seen from the princess series of my di in the past two years, and the princesses have begun to change from passively waiting for the prince to actively pursuing explorers.
In the past two years, many successful marketing cases have been driven by the fan economy under the gaze of women. The most typical feature is that this year's fans even only want to be "mom fans" and "career fans", and most of them have "wall heads" (referring to several stars who are fans at the same time). The "top stream" of flowing water and the iron-beaten female fan group have long become the wealth code of new consumption.
3. How do women perceive their relationships with women?
"It is natural for women to protect women", not long ago, this sentence made the low-cost production of the costume drama "Royal Gifts of Small Servants" gain a large number of votes on social media, and the female screenwriters behind it were also widely concerned.
Unlike women who often appear under the male gaze who are forced to compete with each other to "pull their heads", women's gaze often emphasizes the intimate relationship between women and women. In the movie "Wolfwalker", Mando and Omera, two little girls, are promoting the plot with their friendship, and the girls are not deliberately compared and competed by the creators, and they do not suggest to the audience that one is better than the other.
Female gazes send a more tolerant message and are more inclined to support women. For example, the female creators of the "Earth Journey" YouTube channel, when they boarded the research ship "Weather Bird II", were surprised to find many young female scientists on board the ship, and realized that they could highlight the work of women in the field of science and technology.
Another possibility of exploring women's relationships is a bright spot in women's marketing that can be thought about and grasped.
In general, mass culture under the gaze of women is an observation of another worldview. Today, works of female gaze are still exceptional and minority, but in the future, they can become the norm. Not just as a trend, but also as another window into the world that is now unturnable.
From this perspective, providing support and tools to break the old model, providing opportunities and possibilities to create new options, these two points are the constant source of inspiration for women's marketing.