The Commercialization of Bodies in Li Yu's Cinema

Abstract

The Commercialization of Bodies in Li Yu’s Cinema

Li Yu’s filmography traces a journey through the recent history of mainland China through characters that, for reasons of ethnicity or class, are kept on the margins of a social model designed by capitalism in which the city, and its alienating power, features prominently. On this premise, Li Yu establishes a clear distinction between female and male characters through the control men keep on women’s bodies, and their punitive exposure, domestication and sale, generating in the texts a complex, fertile and purposeful tension that requires a new critical approach to the films and the cinematographic poetics of this director.