"本色" 的延伸: 早期表演文化中杨耐梅的酷儿实践

The star system in early Chinese film culture of the 1920s involves a series of star-making strategies and reception mechanisms built around the mode of "bense acting." Fueled by a range of modern commercial operations, this mode of performance, which runs both on and off the screen, not only provides cover for the public to peep at women but also conspires with a series of restrictive discourses that seek to have multiple influences on actresses. Based on the dynamic and subversive potential of the performance, the paper considers bense performance of Yang Naimei as a process of "restoration." Examining how bense, as a primordial of restoration, is given a series of new meanings in the continued process of reiteration operated by production and reception, and how Yang Naimei negotiates with these definitions on her bense through performing it autonomously. In this way, the study considers the process of Yang Naimei's performative negotiation as a queer practice. Emphasizing her fluid, transgressive gestures that undo a set of restrictively normative constraints. Through this perspective, this paper attempts to revisit the performance culture involved in the early Chinese star system while offering a new way in searching for female agency in the early film industry.