The Mute in the Shadow in the Distance: Towards a New “Oriental Femininism”

Ruan Lingyu as a film illustrating "women as women" as real women denies radical Feminism of film studies to remarkable degree: thereʹs no sexual appeal, thus no "male gaze" in sense of humiliating females; there is persecution of patriarchism, yet what finally leaves her no choice other than death is that the three men she loves would not give her real love in return. Though the woman is in "center stage" position, as if "the whole sky", sheʹs especially unhappy. And, how striking her beauty, silence, endurance, her will are, even and especially in the distance in the shadow. Here the "Oriental" Femininism is in fact for the mute among all the women in this world, for those who never pronounce anger and resistance, because their happiness lies not simply in "equality", "liberation", but in "love", no matter in the "first" or "second" or "third" world they are.