ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This study explores how the ideal of the “strong man” is culturally reimagined in contemporary China and emotionally internalized through children’s media. Focusing on the traditional concept of yanggang zhiqi (陽剛之氣), the paper examines how this value has been recalled, reshaped, and institutionalized within political discourse and cultural policy, functioning as an affective instrument of state ideology across education, literature, and media. Tracing its transformation since the post-reform era, the study highlights how yanggang zhiqi emerges as a core norm of patriotic education and masculine discipline. Through the analysis of the picture book My Dad is a Soldier (我爸爸是軍人), the children’s novel Dad on the Clouds (雲朶上的爸爸), and the comic Special Forces Academy (特種兵学校), the research reveals how various media formats act as emotional training devices, facilitating the gradual internalization of militarized masculinity. It argues that the figure of the “strong man” functions not merely as a personal ideal but as a symbol of loyalty and military subjectivity, steering children’s affective development and reinforcing gender norms. Ultimately, the paper questions the ideological legitimacy of such representations and calls for alternative narratives and affective frameworks that resist the emotional standardization of masculinity in youth culture. The study offers both a theoretical foundation and a critical lens for rethinking the emotional politics of gender in contemporary Chinese cultural production.

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