Chinese Supermom: re-domesticating women in reality TV shows

ABSTRACT

This study engages in feminist media scholarship, analyzing post-millennial Chinese reality shows that center on motherhood against the social backdrop of the termination of the one-child policy and an aging population. These popular shows, exemplified by Supermom, claim to garner respect and social attention for all mothers and potential mothers by spotlighting celebrity mothers’ unpaid sacrifices and hard work in performing their maternal duties. Through the lens of critical discourse analysis, this paper focuses on Supermom’s selection of celebrity mothers; the construction of a female voice via confessional-style interviews, motion graphics, voice-overs, and monologues, as well as the male presence established through interviews with the subjects’ husbands and disembodied male voice-overs. This study argues that Supermom fuels the cultural perception of mandatory motherhood in China by promoting and portraying childbearing and childrearing as the means of fulfillment for women. These motherhood-themed reality shows offer a window through which we can glimpse the various ways television is complicit in defining women’s socially acceptable life choices and shaping post-socialist concepts of motherhood and the female reproductive body.

KEYWORDS:

• Mandatory motherhood
• TV reality shows
• critical discourse analysis
• China
• Supermom

Acknowledgments

I sincerely thank the journal editors, Cynthia Carter and Isabel Molina Guzman, for facilitating the publication of this essay and the two anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is a mainland Chinese production, but two of the three seasons include a celebrity from Taiwan (Jia Jingwen, in this case)—a common practice to attract audiences from across the straits.

2. These interviews were shot and edited in a way that causes them to appear as confessionals by showing only the interviewee and hiding the interviewer. We hear the interviewer asking the celebrity interviewee a question in a certain setting, and then that interview scene is inserted throughout the episode as a confessional to create the illusion of instant, personal commentary through cutaways of the main character sharing his/her thoughts and sentiments by speaking directly to the camera.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wing Shan Ho

Wing Shan Ho is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at Montclair State University, NJ. Her researchinterests include Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Disability Studies, and modern Chinese literatureand film. She has published in international journals such as Jump Cut, Studies in the Humanities,American Journal of Chinese Studies. Email: [email protected]