Illustration:
ill. 6.31 (set: 6.30)
Author:
From film to Comic: Wang Zuyi 连环画改: 王祖毅
Date:
1976
Genre:
comic, comic strip, comic based on film
Material:
scan, paper, grayscale; original source: photographs print on paper, black-and-white
Source:
Chunmiao 春苗 (Chunmiao). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1976:41.
Keywords:
love, romance, Cultural Revolution, work, iconography, relationship, hero, heroine, model hero, studying, collective cause, Chinese Communist Party, Chunmiao

Spring Sprouts (Chunmiao 春苗)

Here, Chunmiao and Fang Ming are again shown at work together. Speaking from the pictorial evidence alone, their hands almost touching, their faces all smiles as they beam toward each other, one might conjecture that these two young people are in love. Yet, again, the text counters such assumptions: it is late at night, and Chunmiao is still studying while Fang Ming teaches her, so it reads.

But Love as prescribed in these comics is always love not for one individual but for a collective cause; it is not feelings of a singular or private self but collectively shared thoughts that may then take on a sacred value and produce uplifting effects—not quite unlike sexual love, after all (Wang 1997, 113). Love is the love of and for the Party as epitomized in many a revolutionary song sounding something like this: “Father is dear; Mother is dear, but they are not as loving as Chairman Mao. The rivers are deep and the seas are deep. Yet they are not as deep as class friendship.” Within this frame, then, sexuality and even nudity were clearly not acceptable. And, accordingly, the pig’s nipples in Zhao Hongben’s comic had to be removed for it to stay (or come back) during the Cultural Revolution (ill. 6.14 b, ill. 6.15 b).