Modern Masturbation Allegory (2024)

Jun 25
2 min read

Updated: Jul 2

Modern Masturbation Allegory (2024)

Director: Li Xinyi

Duration: 24 min

Language: English, Mandarin

Subtitles: English

Country/Region: United Kingdom

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/5c8458_1fcefc027aad400a80d45f39ac115adb/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

With a bold and experimental visual language, Modern Masturbation Allegory turns its gaze directly towards the body itself. Combining personal footage, interviews, diary filmmaking, and experimental montage, it transforms masturbation—a topic long considered taboo—into an exploration of desire, loneliness, pleasure, and self-understanding.

Through the stories and experiences shared by different individuals, masturbation becomes more than a sexual act; it emerges as a means of understanding the self, experiencing the body, and affirming subjectivity. Each account of desire also reflects how individuals relate to themselves, to social norms, and to broader cultural imaginaries.

Within Chinese-speaking cultural contexts, conversations about bodily pleasure and sexuality have long remained marginalised or unspoken. The film therefore pushes queer discourse beyond questions of identity politics towards embodied experience and the construction of subjectivity. It shifts attention away from external recognition and visibility towards inner freedom and self-realisation. By revisiting some of the most intimate, everyday, yet frequently repressed aspects of bodily experience, Modern Masturbation Allegory asserts the queer right to feel, express, and define one’s own desires.

& Director Statement

Masturbation in Chinese carries the meaning of "self-comfort". Among activities related to sex, “masturbation” is the only term that naturally creates a barrier between “self” and "others". This is a collection of masturbation stories from five girls in their early twenties, and it serves as a modern fable reflecting the mental state of contemporary youth. At the same time, I aim to turn it into an artistic game that challenges three habits of observation: reading, watching, and listening, or a book of life – one that writes about youth, women, sex, love, and the complex relationship between the individual and the outside world.