For a long time, the bodies of female athletes have served not only as instruments of athletic performance but also as crucial signs in national narratives and gender constructions. When represented in visual texts, these bodily signs are both preserved and reconfigured through their interaction with other visual elements, thereby generating more complex layers of cultural meaning. This paper examines the film Leap to explore how the bodies of Chinese female volleyball players function as complex cultural signs within national narratives and gender discourses. Using a mixed-methods approach grounded in semiotics and body politics, it analyzes the historical transformation and symbolic reconstruction of female athletic bodies in cinematic texts. The study reveals how these representations express national will, collective memory, and gender identity, and offers a new framework for understanding the intersection of gender, sport, and nationhood in Chinese sports cinema.
Xie et al. (Wed,) studied this question.