The Pulled Punch and the Sheathed Blade: ‘Her Story’ (2024) as a Feminist Stand-Up Film

The Moynihan Institute's East Asia Program presents Zhuoyi Wang, professor and chair of East Asian languages and literatures at Hamilton College.

This talk frames the 2024 Chinese blockbuster Her Story (Hao dongxi) as a “stand-up film” and explores how the movie borrows not only the quick, verbal wit of stand-up, but also its risky politics of “punching up” in a censored environment.

The talk first places Her Story in conversation with the recent rise of Chinese female stand-up comedians, especially the debates around Yang Li and the weaponization of “women’s punches,” a term anti-feminist internet users now deploy to cast almost any feminist critique as an illegitimate blow.

Against this backdrop, the film pulls some of its punches with ironic disclaimers that seem to step back from direct feminist “punching,” avoids taking on the most overtly patriarchal and misogynistic viewers, and instead trains its sharpest critique on performative “feminist men.”

The talk then shows how Her Story “sheathes the blade” by hiding pointed references to COVID lockdowns, tightening information control, and the decline of investigative journalism inside a feel-good, almost utopian story of women’s alliances as spaces of care, healing and muted resistance. It concludes by considering what this mix of pulled punch and sheathed blade reveals about disillusionment and stubborn, necessary hope in contemporary China.

Zhuoyi Wang is professor and chair of East Asian languages and literatures at Hamilton College. He is the author of Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), co-editor of Maoist Laughter (Hong Kong University Press, 2019; named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in 2020), and co-editor of Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (Modern Language Association of America, 2024). He has published more than 30 articles and has delivered over 150 invited talks across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, East Asia and Southeast Asia.