Female Narratives and Platform Feminism in Chinese Stand-Up Comedy: Emotional Capitalism and Pseudo-Empowerment

Abstract

This paper investigates the integration of female narratives, platform feminism, and emotional capitalism in contemporary China through the case of the stand-up comedian Director Fang, who rapidly rose to prominence on Chinese social media platforms in 2025. Centering on escaping from her abusive marriage, Director Fang transformed individual experiences into public expression through her performances on the show King of Stand-up Comedy 2, which triggered platform-wide circulation and discussion. Her female narratives activated online emotional communities among users, which platform logics quickly amplified and repacked sentiment as female power, producing a highly visible yet depoliticized popular feminism phenomenon.  As her visibility grew, Director Fang and her agency gradually shifted toward neoliberal feminism, branding her as an inspiring, independent woman who achieved self-improvement through personal effort. With nationwide solo tours and advertising collaborations, the platform influence of Director Fang was redirected toward commercialization. In this trajectory, a pseudo-empowerment of feminism was constituted, as it offered women a sense of recognition but left structural gender inequalities untouched and turned female suffering into commercial values. By analyzing this transformation, this paper proposes a hybrid form of feminism and illustrates how platformed female narratives have developed into emotional capitalism in Chinese stand-up comedy.