The power of aroma: gender, biopolitics and melodramatic imagination in theLegend of Zhen Huan

This article combines ethnography and textual analysis to consider the reasons for the immense popularity of the 2012 Chinese television series “The Legend of Zhen Huan” (LZH). I argue that LZH, a historical melodrama, stages key phenomena—especially in the depiction of feminine wielding of aroma—that audiences recognize as parallel to contemporary gender norms and governance in China. In LZH, aroma is treated as a diagnostic, infiltrating, and affective force that makes the female body permeable and affective, extending feminine power. Women use aroma to channel and transform male power. For audiences, who watched the series by the millions and continue to repeat its catchphrases, the depiction of aroma in LZH highlights the forms of biopower they are subject to, as well as imagined possibilities for political and personal resistance. Such resistance involves strategic manipulation of gender norms that have been pressed in the government’s recent exertion of biopower.