Critiques of Gender Ideology: Women comic artists and their work in Hong Kong

Abstract

Comic books in Hong Kong have traditionally been produced primarily by male artists for male audiences. Over the past 30 years of comic history in Hong Kong, only three works have been critical of dominant gender ideology. This paper examines these works and their varying approaches to gender politics in Hong Kong. It argues that these artists made use of a creative strategy that took into account the rapidly changing historical context and female audience to create messages that reflected dominant culture while also either subtly or directly questioning source elements of dominant gender ideology. In the 1960s and 1970s, the fashionable and at times frivolous imagery of Lee Wai-chun's 13-Dot Cartoons gave a newly emerging group of young women workers and students a confident feminine heroine and model of modern womanhood. In the late 1980s, the direct critique of Chan Ya capitalized on a moment of political insecurity to briefly introduce her unattractive but insightful characters and outsider perspective. Finally, in the late 1990s, Lau Lee-lee's self-proclaimed feminist work has combined a subtle and at times ambiguous style with shocking, taboo, and intensely personal themes, bringing them directly into the political realm.