Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Mao Zedong’s 1952 slogan was clear: “develop sports; enhance the people’s physique.” This paper explores cinema, sports, and gender in Maoist China by analyzing sports-themed historical films. Filmmakers, actors, cultural officials, and fans debated on how sports, cinema, and historical narratives could help construct new China. While muscular arms of workers represented mainstream masculinity, selfless female athletes’ strength, power, and martial prowess exemplify extreme demands on women’s bodies in sports competitions and contribution to a prosperous socialist China with public ownership and a planned economy. Women are shown as subject to male officials and coaches armed with “correct politics and ideology” and professional knowledge. The state-inspired patriarchal authorities guide adolescent female athletic protagonists who live communally in dormitories exempt from parental supervision. Male guardianship, tropes of physical sacrifice even by the disabled, and devotion to discipline and collectivism tame the eroticism evident in the bare skin, lively moves, and captivating smiles of the athletes. The 1952 marriage law created a new cinematic imaginary in which female athletes marry ideal male citizens such as devoted scientists and soldiers, whose early deaths demonstrate female loyalty and sexual suppression. Maoist Chinese filmmakers borrowed from a controversial source to showcase their socialist nation on the world stage. Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda documentary films invoked nature and mountains to promote masculinity, patriarchal idol, and power. For the Chinese, historical events such as conquest of Mount Everest by Tibetan female mountaineers became an on-screen way to compensate for the lack of opportunities to compete internationally.