Notes Introduction 1. 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. 2. Wang, The sublime figure of history: Aesthetics and politics in twentieth-century China, 201, 17. 3. 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. 4. My narrative of Liang’s experience in this section is based on Liang, Yi ge hongweibing de zibai (Confession of a red guard), 159–223. 5. Ibid., 164. 6. Ibid., 163. 7. Ibid., 215–17. 8. Ibid., 163. 9. Ibid., 218. 10. “Propaganda” (xuanchuan) was a highly positive word in the revolutionary context. 11. I capitalize the word “Rightist,” because being “Rightist” or “Leftist” had its specific meaning in the revolutionary context. In Michael M. Sheng’s words, 184 NOTES being Rightist meant “being less committed to the revolution or uncertain about one’s communist identity,” while being Leftist meant “being less tact- ful 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. 12. NCNA, “Shanghai renda yubei huiyi douzheng Zhang Luo lianmeng zai Shanghai de zhuyao gugan, Sun Dayu mianhongerchi choutaibilu (At the preparatory meeting of the Shanghai People’s Congress, [people] fought against a core member of the Zhang [Bojun] and Luo [Longji] Coalition, Sun Dayu, who flushed with shame and completely acted like a fool),” Renmin ribao (People’sdaily), August 22 1957. 13. J. R. Townsend, Political participation in communist China (Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 1969) 74. 14. Shaoguang Wang, Failure of charisma: The cultural revolution in Wuhan (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 21. 15. Zedong Mao and Tse-tung Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. III (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967) 119. 16. Mitch Meisner, “Dazhai: The mass line in practice,” Modern China,4,no.1 (1978): 57. 17. 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. 18. “Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyangweiyuanhui guanyu wuchanjieji wen- huadageming de jueding (Decision of the CCP’s Central Committee concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution),” Renmin ribao (People’s daily), August 9, 1966. 19. Yibo Bo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu (Reflections on certain major policy decisions and events) (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangx- iao chubanshe, 1991), 263. Mao and Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. V 168. 20. Marc Blecher, “Consensual politics in rural Chinese communities: The mass line in theory and practice,” Modern China, 5, no. 1 (1979): 105–126. 21. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Writings of Mao Zedong since the establish- ment of the People’s Republic of China) vol. 12 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1998), 71. 22. 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 char- acterizes the masses as passively responding to leaders’ initiatives, having 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. 23. M. Oksenberg, “Occupational groups in Chinese society and the cultural revo- lution,” 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. NOTES 185 24. Words often attributed to Lenin in Maoist China. 25. The Gang of Four is the name given to the political faction officially blamed for the Cultural Revolution. For more about them, see the concluding chapter. 26. Qing Jiang, “Lin Biao tongzhi weituo Jiang Qing tongzhi zhaokai de budui wenyigongzuo zuotanhui jiyao (Summary of the forum on the work in literature and art in the armed forces with which comrade Lin Biao entrusted comrade Jiang Qing),” Renmin ribao (People’s daily), May 29, 1967. 27. Laikwan Pang, Building a new China in cinema: The Chinese left-wing cinema movement, 1932–1937 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 142. 28. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI Publishing, 1999), 144–65. 29. Qing Jiang, “Guanyu dianying wenti (On the film Issue) (May 1966),” in Fandong yingpian Wu Xun Zhuan Liao Yuan pipan cailiao (Criticism mate- rials 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. 30. In the field of history, Franz Schurmann noticed the limitation that the adjec- tive “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, Organiza- tion, 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,2ded. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 504. 31. In Chinese, a commonly used term for this cinema happens to be also “revolutionary cinema” (geming dianying). But like “communist cinema” in English, “revolutionary cinema” in Chinese is usually associated with a static understanding, namely that the cinema transmits a definite “revolutionary” ideology. If the “communist” world is the other to the capitalist, then the “revo- lutionary” period is the other to the post-revolutionary era in China. The book seeks to reveal precisely the complexities, diversities, and dynamics obscured and concealed by such otherness. 32. Debo Ma and Guangxi Dai, “Chen Huangmei zai shiqi nian, jian ping ‘zhuan- jiapai’ yu ‘zuo’ pai de luxianzhizheng (Chen Huangmei during the 17 years: On the conflicts between the ‘specialists’ and the ‘Leftists’),” Dangdai dianying (Contemporary cinema), no. 2 (1993): 62. 33. W. J. F. Jenner, “Book review: Chinese cinema: Culture and politics since 1949 by Paul Clark,” The China quarterly, no. 121 (1990): 140. 34. Wang, The sublime figure of history: Aesthetics and politics in twentieth-century China 123. 186 NOTES 35. Paul Clark, Chinese cinema: Culture and politics since 1949, Cambridge studies in film (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 24–55. 36. Paul Pickowicz, China on film: A century of exploration, confrontation, and controversy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012), 189–212. 37. Clark, Chinese cinema: Culture and politics since 1949, 117. 38. Pickowicz, China on film: A century of exploration, confrontation, and contro- versy, 195, 206, 08. 39. 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. 40. Pickowicz, China on film: A century of exploration, confrontation, and contro- versy 209. 41. Oksenberg, “Occupational groups in Chinese society and the Cultural Revolu- tion,” 2. 42. Gina Marchetti, “Action-Adventure as ideology,” in Cultural politics in con- temporary America, ed. Ian H. Angus and Sut Jhally (New York: Routledge, 1989), 185. 43. Yomi Braester, “The political campaign as genre: Ideology and iconogra- phy 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). 44. Altman, Film/Genre, 15. 45. Ibid.,