Entangled Empowerment: Postfeminist Sensibility, Platform Capitalism, and Gendered Narratives in Chinese Costume Idol Dramas

This article examines how postfeminist empowerment is mediated and reconfigured within China’s platformed media ecology, focussing on narrative design and affective mechanisms. Drawing on two female-centred Chinese costume idol dramas, A Dream of Splendor (2022) and The Legend of Shen Li (2024), the study combines close textual reading with contextualised paratextual analysis of highly visible discussions on platforms such as Douban, Weibo, and Bilibili. While both series share a genre logic centred on female growth and emotional autonomy, their pathways of empowerment diverge significantly. Female subjectivity is predominantly validated through affective labour, emotional stability, and relational repair rather than sustained structural confrontation. Platform curation and audience affective engagement further consolidate this logic, transforming empowerment into a highly shareable and emotionally resonant cultural form. Through comparative analysis, the article reveals an inherent tension within postfeminist empowerment in the Chinese platform context, where female agency is simultaneously foregrounded and depoliticised.