Media file:
vid. 0.1
Title:
Chinese Communist song and dance
Source:
Heidelberg catalogue entry, DACHS Archive
Keywords:
wedding, Cultural Revolution, nostalgia, Karaoke, model works, contemporary China, music

Chinese Communist song and dance

Cultural Revolution Culture was popular culture. Almost everyone was involved with creating and thus embodying it (in reenacting the model operas, singing songs, painting portraits of Mao, or drawing comics, etc). Those involved may not necessarily have accepted the propaganda messages outright, but may have reformulated them within his or her own context. They would either have appreciated propaganda art’s aesthetic qualities or criticized them; they would either have noticed its political content or ignored it.

This ambiguity and openness in reception explains some of the after-effects of Cultural Revolution propaganda art, which has come to be appreciated not just by those who have nostalgic memories of performing (and having fun with) it and (dis-)believing it during their youth, but also by a younger generation who never went through the Cultural Revolution at all. This younger generation, now singing Karaoke, rapping and rocking to the revolutionary songs and model works, figures prominently in a 2005 documentary on the model works (Yang Ban Xi 2005). It is also the generation that would invite, as in this example from 2007, a group of musicians playing and dancing to Mao quotes including “Be resolute” as entertainment for their wedding celebration, for example, who can be seen in this clip.