Popular Cinema and Political Thought in Post-Mao China

40 Paul G. Pickowiczexploratory chapter) would have to account, among many other things, forthe popularity of other film genres among these people. Similarly, a comprehensiveanalysis of their political thought would require an evaluation ofmany sources, not just the film materials discussed here.The films of the late 1970s, the immediate post-Cultural Revolutionperiod, arc not very useful for our purposes because the Chinese film industryrecovered very slowly from the political and artistic ravages of the ten-yearCultural Revolution. Large numbers of films were produced after Mao'sdeath (129 features were made from 1977 to 1979, compared to only 109features turned out in the Cultural Revolution decade) and box-office receiptssoared to unprecedented heights, but the new films broke very little freshpolitical ground. One critic observed that the film audience was starved:"They flocked to the cinema to watch any film that was showing." 4 Whilesignificant numbers of literary intellectuals and reform activists were participatingin the political protest movements of 1978 and 1979, filmmakers,according to Ding Qiao, deputy director of the Film Bureau in the early1980s, were still making movies that "bore traces of the stereotypes" associatedwith filmmaking in the Cultural Revolution. 5This is not to suggest that the film industry was totally unaffected bythe political protests of the late 1970s. But the impact became apparent onlyafter the crackdown on Democracy Wall in late 1979 as films echoing andpopularizing the concerns of the protesters finally began to surface. Manyof these motion pictures were based on works of fiction published beforethe demise of Democracy Wall. The new political thrust of Chinese cinemabecame evident around 1980. True, filmmakers constituted a privileged elite,the film industry was still monopolized by the state and monitored by partycensors, and the great majority of new works still contributed little to thepopular political discourse or to the development of film art in China, butbeginning in 1980 a small but potent cinema of social criticism, linkedboth in terms of form and content to the rich traditions of the 1930s and1940s, began to emerge as the most popular genre of new films, especiallyamong educated urban youth. Unprecedented numbers of works that clearlyexpressed unofficial political views slipped through state censorship organs.In my estimation the most interesting group of popular political filmswas completed in the period from 1980 to early 1983, that is, the yearsbetween the fall of Democracy Wall and the launching of the campaignagainst spiritual pollution in 1983. Three of the most representative worksthat circulated in this unusual period arc The legend of Tianyun Mountain(1980), directed by Xie Jin; A corner forgotten by love (1981), directed byLi Yalin and Zhang Ji; and At middle age (1982), directed by Wang Qiminand Sun Yu. 6 These films came closer than anything else produced after1949 to an openly critical popular cinema. They were widely acclaimed bythe film establishment, highly critical of the Communist party, extraordinarilypopular among the film audience at a time when the film industry wasbeginning to get stiff competition from the television world, and subjectedto tough criticism in the official press.Popular Cinema ;The legend opublished in 1 Swho was attackvictimized for Istudies in contr1957, but, in 01off the marriagerightist. The otlin 1957, fell insacrificed her caordeal. More th