Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)

Cinema, an extremely popular and useful cultural form during the Maoist era, played a big role in shaping working class subjectivity. This article argues that despite their highly politicised and formalised content, industrial-themed films made during the Cultural Revolution created a “masters of th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Gong, Qian
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	French Centre for Research on Contemporary China 2015
Subjects:	subjectivity representation Cultural Revolution workers Film Masters of the Nation
Online Access:	http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/6690 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12335

id	curtin-20.500.11937-12335
recordtype	eprints
spelling	curtin-20.500.11937-123352017-01-30T11:30:01Z Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976) Gong, Qian subjectivity representation Cultural Revolution workers Film Masters of the Nation Cinema, an extremely popular and useful cultural form during the Maoist era, played a big role in shaping working class subjectivity. This article argues that despite their highly politicised and formalised content, industrial-themed films made during the Cultural Revolution created a “masters of the nation” subjectivity that still resonates with workers who grew up watching these films. In doing so, this article brings together two bodies of scholarship that rarely make reference to one another: filmmaking in the Cultural Revolution period and post-Mao workers’ subjectivity. Post-Mao scholarship has gone beyond simply dismissing films from the Cultural Revolution period as crude propaganda designed to create a highly politicised mass mind. It has drawn our attention to the more complicated nature of this body of filmmaking, particularly the “model play” films. However, new features made during the Cultural Revolution are often seen as “too ideological” to warrant academic attention. This paper attempts to find out how the “masters of the nation” discourse still resonates with workers who grew up watching these films. It argues that, despite the valorisation of workers as the privileged class and an excessive focus on class struggle, these films have indeed endowed the subaltern with the kind of agency that is lacking in contemporary media representations of workers. 2015 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12335 http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/6690 French Centre for Research on Contemporary China restricted
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Curtin University Malaysia
building	Curtin Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
topic	subjectivity representation Cultural Revolution workers Film Masters of the Nation
spellingShingle	subjectivity representation Cultural Revolution workers Film Masters of the Nation Gong, Qian Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)
description	Cinema, an extremely popular and useful cultural form during the Maoist era, played a big role in shaping working class subjectivity. This article argues that despite their highly politicised and formalised content, industrial-themed films made during the Cultural Revolution created a “masters of the nation” subjectivity that still resonates with workers who grew up watching these films. In doing so, this article brings together two bodies of scholarship that rarely make reference to one another: filmmaking in the Cultural Revolution period and post-Mao workers’ subjectivity. Post-Mao scholarship has gone beyond simply dismissing films from the Cultural Revolution period as crude propaganda designed to create a highly politicised mass mind. It has drawn our attention to the more complicated nature of this body of filmmaking, particularly the “model play” films. However, new features made during the Cultural Revolution are often seen as “too ideological” to warrant academic attention. This paper attempts to find out how the “masters of the nation” discourse still resonates with workers who grew up watching these films. It argues that, despite the valorisation of workers as the privileged class and an excessive focus on class struggle, these films have indeed endowed the subaltern with the kind of agency that is lacking in contemporary media representations of workers.
format	Journal Article
author	Gong, Qian
author_facet	Gong, Qian
author_sort	Gong, Qian
title	Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)
title_short	Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)
title_full	Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)
title_fullStr	Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)
title_full_unstemmed	Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)
title_sort	masters of the nation: representation of the industrial worker in films of the cultural revolution period (1966-1976)
publisher	French Centre for Research on Contemporary China
publishDate	2015
url	http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/6690 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12335
first_indexed	2018-09-06T18:59:46Z
last_indexed	2018-09-06T18:59:46Z
_version_	1610885771549474816

Masters of the nation: Representation of the industrial worker in films of the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976)

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