IAH 211B

Gender Politics in Ju Dou
In the film, Ju Dou, Zhang Yimou shows us the more oppressive side of China in the early 20th century, and how its laws and policies have affected the underprivileged living there.
On the surface the film is about a traditional Chinese male-dominated society, where men treat women like they are just some objects to be owned whose only real purpose in life is to bear the child of the man, while women are supposed to be obedient and submissive to males. However, if one were to look deeper than that, the film would actually be a subversion to the typical maledominated power politics as Ju Dou has more power than either Jinshan or Tianqing.
Throughout the film, Ju Dou never acts subservient to Jinshan even when he tortures her, and with regards to her relationship to Tianqing, she’s the dominating one while Tianqing is the one who is submissive. Ju Dou even becomes the dominating one in her relationship with Jinshan later on in the film, though it is only temporary. Looking deeper then, the film would actually be about a women having a higher level of power than men in gendered politics, in a society where males hold superior power in gendered politics than females do and the consequences of a female holding such power in such a society.
Early on in the film, after showing him her bruises while he was peeping on her and later on when she was begging to die, Ju Dou attempts to seduce Tianqing. I reason that Ju Dou does this because she wanted to give Jinshan a child so that he would stop torturing her every night for not being able to produce an heir for Jinshan’s family. In contemporary China, a women’s role was to be obedient to the head of the family, make sure that the family is well taken care of, and produce a son that can continue the family lineage. If a wife could not give birth to an heir, then
she