Crisis of Masculinity in 'Curiosity Kills the Cat' (2006, dir. Zhang Yibai) and 'Fireworks Wednesday' (2006, dir. Asghar Farhadi)

CCLPS Early Career Researchers Seminar Series

Location: room C325 (SOAS College Building) or Teams.

Speaker: Yunzi Han, SOAS

Abstract

Centring on the marital problems represented in one Chinese film and another Iranian, Curiosity Kills the Cat and Fireworks Wednesday, this talk looks at women’s agency in the context of both women and men’s experiences of ‘patriarchy’ to move beyond the pervasive binary of oppression and resistance familiar in the gender discourse of Chinese and Iranian contexts. 

A male-centred social system indeed grants men many privileges, however, it also imprisons them. By examining the power play between men and women in their management of their respective social role and standing in the two films, this presentation brings into dialogue the differing but overlapping experiences of men and women to nuance our understanding of women’s agency in the Global South.

About the speaker

Yunzi Han recently received her PhD from SOAS (2024) for her thesis ‘Sexual Politics on Screen: A Comparative Study of Chinese and Iranian Cinema since the 1990s.’ She was the editor-in-chief of SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research (2020-21). She has published in the journal Open Screens (2021) and the edited book ReFocus: The Films of Rakhshān Banietemad (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). She is interested in South-South Critical Comparative Cinema Studies.

Image: Jason Leung (Unsplash)