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Dragon Ladies – Empress Wu’s Demonisation

Posted: August 17th, 2012 | 1 Comment »

A while back as the Gu Kailai-Neil Heywood mess unfurled in China I wrote a short piece for Foreign Policy on the historical nature of Dragon Ladies in China – how a cheap concept from alarmist western Yellow Peril fiction morphed into a trope within the Chinese world. Though some saw this as just an extension of the demonstration of strong women I think the Dragon Lady trope is different to those images around non-Chinese strong women like Thatcher for instance. Similarly, though they had power in certain ways, the Dragon Lady  trope is different to those around women like Jackie Kennedy or Princess Diana. Well, some agreed, some didn’t. Some Chinese commentators saw it as just another attack on China and others as a symptom of a much deeper problem about more generally held perceptions about women in the Chinese media and society.

Empress Wu Zetian exercised some – Chinese respondents to the post split between those who saw her as demonised (both at the time and by historians since for various reasons) and those who think she was stitched up by history. Of course male emperors could be cruel – Qi Shi Huang did his fair share of killing in the cause of his empire but it’s a different trope again from that which surrounds the myths and interpretations of Empress Wu.

Anyway, the point is that here’s a link to a longer and much more considered piece on Empress Wu on Smithsonian.com which includes references to the 1963 Hong Kong film about her which looks like a winner for a wet Sunday afternoon if you can track it down! The movie’s poster pretty much it all about their dragon lady stance on the good lady!

Li Li Hua does beautiful but deadly as Empress Wu in 1963

 

 

 


One Comment on “Dragon Ladies – Empress Wu’s Demonisation”

  1. 1 aikbun said at 1:44 am on May 28th, 2014:

    I don’t agree:
    http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com/2011/12/dragon-empress-life-of-cixi-dowager.html


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