Article
Imagining the Crowd: Screening the Masses of China’s Cultural Revolution
Modern China Studies
(2018)
Abstract
Abstract: This essay examines three films released from 1979 to 1986 as cases in which Chinese filmmakers resorted to cinematic affect or lyricist expressions as portrayals of societal calamity and psychological aftershock of the masses after the Cultural Revolution. Particularly, the films’ reconfiguration of the “crowd” image reconstructs the affective, social and political agencies of the masses, as well as the individual subjects’ relationship with the collective. The Reverberations of Life displays the influence of music in endowing audiences an affective power and joins individual memories with that of the collective. Music underwrites the Maoist canon by resituating the masses as reminiscing agents, and facilitates a sympathetic frame of reference. As one of the few films which directly depict the militant fights during the Cultural Revolution, Maple Leaves’ staging of the love/politics dichotomy asserts the cinema verité nature of the images, and displays the potential influence of film on shaping the masses’ communal and historical consciousness. Lastly, the acclaimed film Hisbiscus Town (1986) reconceptualizes the “crowd” as sources of collective sympathy, which creates incongruity, contradiction, and even temporary transgression of the Maoist ideology.
Keywords
- crowd,
- subjectivity,
- masses,
- ideology,
- interpellation,
- spectatorship,
- sympathy.
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring April 1, 2018
Citation Information
Li Guo. "Imagining the Crowd: Screening the Masses of China’s Cultural Revolution" Modern China Studies (2018) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/li-guo/46/