Cultural Change 2

Question 1

What happened to performances of foreign works?

Answer 1

Banned

Question 2

Directors, writers and directors were…

Answer 2

Fired or blacklisted

Some attacked by Red Guards

Others committed suicide to escape the violence

Question 3

All new plays and operas..

Answer 3

Glorified Communism

Question 4

What was the new slogan to do with culture?

What did this mean?

Answer 4

“Make it revolutionary or ban it”

Woke that featured traditional customs/ habits/ ideas replaced by plays and operas that advocated Communist ideology

Question 5

What were the new “revolutionary shows”?

What characters did they feature?

Answer 5

Eight new “model dramas” created

Featured communist characters:
•’Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy’— an undercover communist soldier infiltrating and defeating bandits
• ‘The Legend of the Red Lantern’— Communist agents resisting a Japanese invasion

Question 6

In the new revolutionary shows, how were old traditions and beliefs derided?

Answer 6

Superstitious:
Eg • in ‘Romance on the Milky Way’— a groom, referring to the belief that prospects for a good marriage would be helped by scheduling the wedding for a ‘lucky’ day declares:

“We must pick an auspicious day”

Future sister in law (good Communist) scolds him: “superstitious”

Question 7

Some of the ballets were

Answer 7

Turned into movies

Question 8

What happened in “Red Detachment of Women”?

Answer 8

The heroine (poor peasant) escapes an evil landlord who had imprisoned her for failing to pay her exorbitant rent

Becomes the leader of a women’s Red Army detachment (helped by a dashing party cadre)

Question 9

What happened in The East is Red?

Answer 9

Sweeping dance epic

Took Mao’s cult of personality to bizarre levels

Traced the rise of the Communist Party from obscurity to Civil War victory

The title song:
• announced Mao to be “The People’s Saviour”
• claimed: “Without the Communist Party, there would be no China”

Question 10

Where did propaganda teams travel?

Answer 10

To villages with new morals of portable projectors to show the films

Question 11

What does evidence suggest about culture in Guangdong province?

Answer 11

1966– villagers watched four films

1974– watched ten per year

Question 12

How many people had watched the film version of “Taking Tiger Mountain”?

Answer 12

7.3 billion people— seven times by each Chinese person!

Question 13

How may operas and plays were allowed?

Answer 13

Only eight new operas and plays

Question 14

How was China during the Cultural Revolution described?

Answer 14

“cultural desert”

One biographer of Jiang Qing: “turned the mind of the audience to ‘mashes potatoes’”

Question 15

What happened to interest in culture?

Answer 15

After the initial interest, the lack of diversity became boring:

“eight hundred million people watching eight shows”— one joke

Even communist leaders grumbled: Deng Xiaoping— “people want to go to the theatre to relax” but instead “you find yourself in a battlefield”

Question 16

Why were there such high audience figures in China?

Answer 16

Aside from Maoist propaganda films there was nothing else to watch!

Question 17

Why did the new culture not reach all Chinese people?

Answer 17

The government feared to much disruption would reduce agricultural production —
Many peasants were not greatly involved

IT HAS BEEN NOTED that when the PLA went to the countryside to help the peasants, many had never even heard of the Cultural Revolution.

Question 18

Why did Mao’s rule prove to be disastrous for Chinese culture?

(His belief in its purpose)

Answer 18

Believed culture was a TOOL by which societies could be CONTROLLED or REMADE

Sooooo

All culture had to proclaim the GREATNESS of the Communist PARTY, enforce ideological commitment to its policies.

Question 19

Maos attitude to the traditions of Chinese life?

Answer 19

He had no respect for them:

brutally swept them aside, replaced with Communist culture that extolled:
The successes of Communist rule,
The heroism of the PLA
The role of ordinary people within National life

Question 20

What happened to books, music under Mao?

Answer 20

Pre-revolutionary books banned

Music and popular songs praised both Mao and the CCP

Question 21

What happened to the culture of traditional village life?

Answer 21

Targeted:
• old customs and beliefs (Confucius, respecting family elders) damned as superstitious
• this control was heightened during the push for collectivisation: traditional ways of life radically altered

Question 22

Did Jiang Qing succeed during the Cultural Revolution?

Answer 22

✅ created a new communist culture
❌ old traditions proved hard to suppress
❌ years since Mao’s death: many of these old customs have been revived, often with renewed vigour.