The Chinese female spectatorship: a study of the network community of the “boys’ love” movie “Call Me by Your Name”

Through text analysis of the user-generated content in the Douban community, a popular online platform in China, this paper intends to analyze the ways Chinese women watch and interpret a Western "boys' love" movie "Call Me by Your Name." The findings indicate that women engage in active spectatorship, including the gaze of body, the viewing of plot and the perception of emotion based on the female identity. Women's gaze at male image favors the romantic temperament and transforms it into heterosexual fantasy by substituting the male character. At the same time, the female audience can understand and accept homosexuality while retaining their own heterosexual identity. Finally, they praise and adore the romantic love story in the movie.