A Study on the Women Image in 21st Century Chinese ‘Female-centered’ Dramas: Focusing on the Encoding/decoding Theory of Stewart Hall

As women's social and economic status has increased since the 21st century, femalecentered dramas continue to be popular in China.Accordingly, production and creation surrounding female characters are underway in the film and television culture markets, and women are attempting to break away from the dominant position and to show an image that completes their self-identity by breaking away from the construction of others.This paper analyzed the female image shown by women-centered dramas in China based on the theory of 'encoding/decoding' by Stuart Hall, a British cultural school.This paper selected a total of six female characters where the three female-centered dramas in China and conducted case analysis.The encoding part was divided into three layers: basic information, job image, and gender-centered image.According to the research results of this paper, TV producers were found to be attempting to build an image of young unmarried women with personal jobs.These women are economically independent and have relatively strong work abilities.While some women have partly defied the traditional notion of what it means to be a man by taking on leadership roles in gender partnerships, the majority of women still hold subservient positions.The decoding part explored how viewers decode these female images through interviews.Therefore, based on this, this paper deeply explored the relationship between the decoding method adopted by the viewer and whether the character image deviates from the construction of the other.In addition, it was concluded that the image of a woman who deviated from the construction of the other can receive active recognition and decoding from viewers.