Desiring Daughter and Transgressive Mother: The Refashion of Motherhood in the Film Send Me to the Clouds (2019)

By systematically analysing the images of infertile daughters and virtuous mothers portrayed in Send Me to the Green Clouds (2019), this chapter attempts to reflect the reshaping of family structures and maternal discourses by neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics in the 21st century. Adopted by the notion of protective Chineseness proposed by Lisa Rofel, I argue this chapter sheds light on the diverse motherhood in contemporary context. Since the turn of the century, women’s desires and subjectivities in mainland China have exhibited a paradoxical hybridity, both under the impact of neoliberalism and in negotiation with traditional Chinese culture. In addition, this chapter has attempted to extend methodologies for examining contemporary on-screen images and shifting structures of motherhood in mainland China as a counterbalance to the monolithic study of the Western family framework, which ultimately diversifies the marginalised archives of motherhood in the global South.