Abstract:

 By analyzing the textual embodiment of a set of symbolic divisions valorized by the Chinese patriarchal sociocultural order in classical Chinese fiction, drama, critical discourses and film melodrama and the ways in which these divisions contribute to the construction of a viewing subject implicated in the complex social relations that make up the Chinese social formation in spatial terms, we can gain new insights into the intertextuality of Xie Jin's film melodrama in terms of its relation to the traditional Chinese melodramatic paradigm and the political paradigm of the Mao period and the vital role it plays in the new period as a period of political and cultural transition. Focusing on Xie Jin' s deployment of a bipolar narrative pattern informed by the Chinese yinyang cosmology that allows him to blend history with fiction and the sociocultural and political function of his melodramatic treatment of touchy political issues and identity problems with recourse to specific miseenscene techniques and cinematic codes, the author argues that the significance of Xie Jin' s film melodrama which centers on the definition and redefinition of the social and political status of the main characters within a highly limited ethical and political discursive field lies in its function to provide women and other socially disadvantaged social groups with a semantically complex reference framework and new modes of moral expressivity to negotiate with the dominant forces in society and its capacity to mediate social contradictions and facilitate the construction of a collective subjectivity that promotes and affirms sociocultural transformation in the new period.

Key words: symbolic division, subjectivity, spatial codes, identity politics, melodramatic paradigm