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Panoptic Patriarchy in Raise the Red Lantern

Michel Foucault’s concept of the panopticon describes an architectural model of unseen surveillance that enforces discipline without direct coercion. In a panoptic system, individuals internalize the watcher’s gaze and self-regulate their behavior under the threat of observation. Although initially conceived as a circular prison with a central watchtower, the panoptic logic has since been used to examine institutions such as schools, hospitals, the military, and more. Indeed, feminist scholars often describe a panopticon of patriarchy in which women internalize gender expectations and adjust their behavior under an omnipresent male gaze (Wright).


The film Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991) demonstrates this concept of panoptic patriarchy through the story of Songlian (Gong Li), a young woman who becomes the fourth mistress of a wealthy Master Chen (Ma Jingwu) in 1920s China. Through set design and cinematography, Zhang constructs a world where patriarchal authority is sustained by both pervasive surveillance and the women’s internalized self-regulation and rivalry. This essay will discuss the visual manifestation of panoptic patriarchy in the film, focusing on the early scenes where Songlian enters the Chen compound (3:30-6:37) and when the Master joins her in bed (10:53-13:45).


The film’s set design offers the most immediately noticeable embodiment of panoptic patriarchy. As Songlian enters the compound (3:30-3:38), a towering wall engraved with ancient-looking text—likely detailing household rules—dominates the frame. The wall’s scale visually dwarfs Songlian, signaling that she is entering a space where authority and tradition are inscribed into the very architecture. As she moves deeper into the compound, a servant (Zhou Qi) appears at the edge of the frame, watching her from above (4:11-4:16) like an extension of the compound’s omnipresent gaze, questioning her presence. This is a space built for constant observation; surveillance descends from above and those below are exposed. Throughout the film, this same servant, acting as not only the compound’s lead housekeeper but also a pious enforcer of its traditions, articulates the rules that the wives—Songlian included—gradually internalize. They use the compound’s balconies and rooftop passageways to surveil and undermine one another. Thus, through set design, Zhang creates the visual conditions for a self-sustaining panoptic system, where surveillance is both enforced and perpetuated from within those surveilled.


This system of control is reinforced with the depiction of the compound’s confining architecture, visually trapping Songlian within its walls. In the shot where Songlian replies to the servant (4:16-4:27), nearly a fourth of each side of the frame is filled by high estate walls, with Songlian positioned at the center. As the servant leads Songlian deeper into the compound (4:40-5:19), the shots remain dominated by stone walls and rooftops, with almost no sky visible, enclosing her within the carceral structure of the household. This visual strategy recurs throughout the film: Yimou repeatedly returns to symmetrical aerial shots of Songlian’s courtyard,[1] emphasizing her confinement under a standardized gaze of surveillance. Indeed, the four mistresses each live in identical courtyard houses, arranged linearly across the estate. Like segregated prisoners, they are symbolically kept apart, prevented from forming solidarity under the mechanisms of patriarchal authority.


The red-blue color contrast throughout the film is also striking. In nighttime aerial shots of Songlian’s courtyard, the red lanterns are the only sources of light in an otherwise dark, blue landscape. These lanterns, which indicate which wife the Master has chosen for the night, serve as visible markers of favor and status. In a world otherwise shrouded in darkness, the lanterns seem to offer the only visible beacon of advancement. Women can promote their status only by participating in the ritual of the lanterns. But when Songlian asks the Master to extinguish the lanterns in bed, he refuses, insisting that he likes everything “bright and formal” (13:28-13:32). This is a household where women are exposed to constant visibility; even in bed with the Master, after their worth has been proven for the day, they are denied the basic fulfillment of privacy because adherence to tradition takes precedence above all else, and it must be a public display. In this panoptic world, women must submit themselves to the watchful system that confines them. Their path to power lies not in solidaric resistance but in deeper participation in their own subjugation. 


This sense of enforced visibility is amplified by the film’s cinematography. Like the observer in a panoptic system, the Master’s face remains indistinct, never shown in clear focus. For the “prisoner” Songlian, however, from the moment she enters the compound, the camera never leaves her face. It even almost adopts the perspective of an unseen authority, positioning her as a subject under continuous, impersonal observation. In the scene where she is introduced to the compound, as she walks forward and the camera tracks backward, she puzzledly glances to either side, building an expectation of a point-of-view shot (3:39-4:03). But none arrives. Instead, the next shot frames Songlian from behind, denying the audience access to her perspective (4:04-4:08). Indeed, throughout the sequence, the shot often precedes Songlian’s entrance. It frames the empty architecture before she walks into view, as if switching from one surveillance feed to another. Even before she acts, the system is already expectantly watching. Further emphasizing her containment, Songlian is consistently placed at the center of rigidly symmetrical, static compositions. It is almost as if, like the household itself, the camera is an impassive, invisible authority that demands order at all times.


Yet the most chilling feature of this panoptic world is not the surveillance enforced by authority. It is the way the women internalize it and become agents of the system themselves. In particular, under the constant gaze of the household (and the cinematic gaze of the camera), Songlian slowly begins to absorb the patriarchal expectations around her. Though she initially resists—for instance, by delaying action when ordered to hold the lantern beside her face (11:41–12:16)—she eventually conforms, even faking a pregnancy to gain the Master’s favor. She adopts the mentality that advancement is possible only by playing by the system’s rules. And this logic is not unique to Songlian. All the women in the household (with the arguable exception of the first wife, whose position is already secure) act as both subjects and agents of surveillance. Rather than forming solidarity, they turn against each other, using the household’s network of servants and rooftop passageways to monitor and betray one another. The third mistress (He Saifei) is initially openly hostile towards Songlian; the second mistress (Cao Cuifen) invites the doctor in an attempt to expose Songlian’s false pregnancy; and Songlian herself, albeit unintentionally, reveals the third mistress’s affair, leading to the third mistress’s death. Surveillance is their weapon and information their means of power. Yet because they compete rather than resist collectively, the patriarchal structure remains intact, and their value continues to be measured solely in relation to the Master. Zhang thus vividly captures the panoptic dynamic of a system sustained not by external force but by the women’s internalized surveillance and rivalry.


Raise the Red Lantern constructs a chilling vision of the patriarchal panopticon. Through careful attention to set design and cinematography, the film reveals how structures of surveillance and control, especially in gendered contexts, may not only be enforced by authority but internalized by those trapped within them. In doing so, Zhang critiques the systems that sustain gender inequality, whether it be under the guise of tradition or order. Indeed, the film’s final scene, with the arrival of a new mistress, leaves little hope for rupture. The cycle of oppression in patriarchy simply begins again for the next woman.

 


[1] Examples include 13:38, when the Master joins Songlian in bed for the first time; 27:45, when the servant orders Songlian to wait by the door for the Master’s decision; 30:08, after the Master chooses Songlian; 1:16:45 and 1:17:25, after Songlian announces she is pregnant; 1:32:17, as servants carry away a fainted Yan’er; 1:38:17, when Songlian announces her 20th birthday and asks for wine; and 2:01:34, the following summer after she has “gone mad.”


 

Bibliography

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, Pantheon

Books, 1977.


Gutting, Gary, and Johanna Oksala. “Michel Foucault.” Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019,


Lee, Joann. “Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern: Contextual Analysis of Film through a Confucian/Feminist 

Matrix.” Asian Cinema, vol. 8, no. 1, 1 Mar. 1996, pp. 120–127, https://doi.org/10.1386/ac.8.1.120_4.


Loeb, Jacqueline. “Dissonance Rising: Subversive Sound in Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red

Lantern.” Film-Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 1, Feb. 2011, pp. 204–219,


Wright, Amelia. “The Panopticon of the Patriarchy.” Viva, 2025, 

 


Jessie Li is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Film & Media. She is from Shanghai, China.

 

 

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