She taught at the Beijing Film Academy before assuming professorship at the Institute of Comparative Literature and Culture and directorship of the Center for Film and Cultural Studies at Peking University. She has long been engaged in the New Rural Reconstruction Movement and the Green movement. She is the author of more than ten scholarly monographs. Her works have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. Her literary, film and TV commentary have addressed an expanding audience in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong over the last decades.
Ideas
Dai is known for her early critique of the self-Orientalizing tendencies of filmmakers considered to be part of China's Fifth Generation such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.[2] According to Dai, the historical imagery of their films tend to produce "oriental landscapes" that are oriented towards Western reception and prize recognition.[3]
In addition, she has written extensively about the representation of women in Chinese film. In one of her most well-known critiques, she examines the trope of gender-crossing through the myth of Hua Mulan (a woman who disguises herself as a man to join the army as a substitute for her father) in a series of women-centered films such as New Women, and revolutionary operas such as White-Haired Girl and the Red Detachment of Women. For her, this myth usefully indicates how drag, which can be subversive of patriarchal systems, can also reinforce them.[4]
Dai's work is generally critical of capitalism—she has been associated with the New Left. One of her analyses of consumerism in China traces the transformation of the word guangchang, which referred to the politicized space of the public square, but now is often used in the names of shopping centers. She has also described the market for souvenirs and historical tours related to the Maoist era as "imaginary nostalgia" that acts as a “substitute for historical consciousness".[5]
