Abstract
In a memoir about his experiences during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) campaign, Liang Xiaosheng, a former Red Guard, describes what he calls “one of the most frantic scenes ever to occur in human history.” On November 3, 1966, he and “tens of thousands of” other Red Guards from all over the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “shouted, yelled, and cried” in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. They rushed and crowded there to see Mao, who would “inspect” (jianyue) them from atop the Tiananmen Gate:
Thousands upon thousands of Red Guards converged into a sea of people, twisting and turning in Tiananmen Square, becoming a huge maelstrom as in a deep sea. Each person was like a tiny rock, being turned and swirled in a gigantic whirlpool, neither rising nor sinking. Whichever way one should turn to face Tiananmen Gate was completely beyond one’s control, as he or she was being forced to spin around and around in the vortex.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Xiaosheng Liang, Yi ge hongweibing de zibai (Confession of a Red Guard) (Beijing: Wenhuayishu chubanshe, 2006), 216.
The English translation is a slightly revised version of Ban Wang, The sublime figure of history: Aesthetics and politics in twentieth-century China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 198. Liang does not make the date clear in his account, which however matches the situation of Mao’s sixth inspection on the Red Guards on November 3, 1966.
For details of this inspection, see Hong Zeng, ed. Tiananmen wangshi zhuizong baogao (Accounts of the past events at Tiananmen square) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxuan chubanshe, 2010), 402–03.
Many revolutionary rituals were as half-hearted as the political study sessions that Su Xiu, a dubbing actor and director, experienced at the Shanghai Film Studio during the Cultural Revolution Period. Wang sees such study sessions as an integral part of “a high tide of rituals and rites” that the Chinese engaged in “with an enthusiasm that was as blind as it was sincere, as irrational as it was earnest” (ibid., 215–16.). According to Su’s account, however, no one took these sessions seriously. They made good use of the boring time by secretly or openly playing games; Xiu Su, Wo de peiyin shengya (My dubbing career) (Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 2005), 20–21. This book, especially in chapter six, discusses more examples of the rituals that simply went through motions or even invited dissidence.
I capitalize the word “Rightist,” because being “Rightist” or “Leftist” had its specific meaning in the revolutionary context. In Michael M. Sheng’s words, being Rightist meant “being less committed to the revolution or uncertain about one’s communist identity,” while being Leftist meant “being less tactful or having too much revolutionary zeal to be patient;” Michael M. Sheng, Battling Western imperialism: Mao, Stalin, and the United States. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 12–13.
J. R. Townsend, Political participation in communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) 74.
Shaoguang Wang, Failure of charisma: The cultural revolution in Wuhan (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 21.
Zedong Mao and Tse-tung Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. III (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967) 119.
Mitch Meisner, “Dazhai: The mass line in practice,” Modern China, 4, no. 1 (1978): 57.
Mao and Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. III, 12, 315. Zedong Mao and Tse-Tung Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. V (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1977) 184.
Yibo Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Reflections on certain major policy decisions and events) (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1991), 263. Mao and Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. V 168.
Marc Blecher, “Consensual politics in rural Chinese communities: The mass line in theory and practice,” Modern China, 5, no. 1 (1979): 105–126.
Stuart R. Schram, The Thought of Mao Tse-Tung (Cambridge (Cambridgeshire); New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 145. Skinner and Winckler’s original model falls short in recognizing the agency of the masses. It characterizes the masses as passively responding to leaders’ initiatives, hbaving choices only on a continuum from compliance to passive resistance. But the disturbance-order cycle is still a precise term to describe power dynamics played out under the Maoist rulership.
M. Oksenberg, “Occupational groups in Chinese society and the cultural revolution,” in The Cultural revolution: 1967 in review, four essays, Edited by Chang, Chun-shu, James Crump, and Rhoads Murphey (University of Michigan: Center for Chinese Studies, 1968), 2.
Laikwan Pang, Building a new China in cinema: The Chinese left-wing cinema movement, 1932–1937 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 142.
Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI Publishing, 1999), 144–65.
Qing Jiang, “Guanyu dianying wenti (On the film Issue) (May 1966),” in Fandong yingpian Wu Xun Zhuan Liao Yuan pipan cailiao (Criticism materials of reactionary films The Life of Wu Xun and The Ablaze Prairie), Edited by Beijing dianyingxueyuan jinggangshan wenyibingtuan hongdaihui (Beijing: Beijing dianyingxueyuan jinggangshan wenyibingtuan hongdaihui, May 1967), 17.
In the field of history, Franz Schurmann noticed the limitation that the adjective “communist” may place on our understanding of China as early as in 1968. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, he amended his influential work Ideology and Organization in Communist China and claimed, If I were to give the book a new title today, I would call it Ideology, Organization, and Society in China. The original title testifies to the weight I assigned ideology and organization, and to China’s Communist character. However, due weight must now be given to the resurgence of the forces of Chinese society; Franz Schurmann, Ideology and organization in communist China, 2d ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 504.
Paul Clark, Chinese cinema: Culture and politics since 1949, Cambridge studies in film (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 24–55.
Paul Pickowicz, China on film: A century of exploration, confrontation, and controversy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012), 189–212.
Zhang Yingjin also points out this issue in his comments on the book; Yingjin Zhang, Screening China: Critical interventions, cinematic reconfigurations, and the transnational imaginary in contemporary Chinese cinema (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Chinese Studies, 2002), 53.
Gina Marchetti, “Action-Adventure as ideology,” in Cultural politics in contemporary America, ed. Ian H. Angus and Sut Jhally (New York: Routledge, 1989), 185.
Yomi Braester, “The political campaign as genre: Ideology and iconography during the Seventeen Years Period,” Modern language quarterly, 69, no. 1 (2008): 119–140.
Tina Mai Chen, “Textual communities and localized practices of film in Maoist China,” in Film, history and cultural citizenship: Sites of production, ed. Tina Mai Chen and David S. Churchill (New York: Routledge, 2007): 61–80.
Paul Clark, The Chinese cultural revolution: A history (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997), 45.
Michel Gordon Colin Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, Edition: 1st American ed., 1980), 98.
Anita Chen, “Dispelling misconceptions about the Red Guard Movement: The necessity to re-examine cultural revolution factionalism and periodization,” Journal of contemporary China, 1, no. 1 (1992): 61–85.
Yomi Braester and Tina Mai Chen, “Film in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979: The missing years?,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 5, no. 1 (2011): 7.
Copyright information
© 2014 Zhuoyi Wang
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wang, Z. (2014). Introduction: Understanding Revolutionary Culture and Cinema. In: Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378743_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378743_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47847-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-37874-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)