May 19, 2015.

“In 1942, Mao Zedong issued his “Talks on Yan’an Forum of Art and Literature”. In 1966, 24 years later, he launched the Cultural Revolution.

What connection do you see between his views of art here and the function of art during the Culture Revolution?

Mao Zedong’s “Talks on Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature” May 1942:

In the excerpt we are given by Professor Kirby on Mao Zedong’s “Talks on Yan’an Forum of Art and Literature” which he issued in May 1942 – 24 years before he launched his Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), we can see that his ideas of art, literature and culture had formally and firmly crystallized here.

In this excerpt, we can discern his thoughts:

·       “revolutionary art and literature should create all kinds of characters on the basis of actual life, and help the masses to push history forward.”

·       “artists and writers can create art and literature ……..that can awaken and arouse the masses, and impel them to united and struggle to change their environment.”

·       Mao felt the workers, peasants and soldiers then were involved in a lifelong battle with their feudal landlords, but they remained illiterate, and “badly need a widespread enlightenment” and such culture, knowledge, art and literature “would heighten their passion for struggle ……..and thus enable them to fight the enemy heart and one mind.”

If I may be allowed to quote further from this Talks on Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature, we can get the full spectrum of his thinking on art, literature and culture for the masses of people in China, especially, to him, “the workers, peasants and soldiers,” since, each of these passages quoted below reinforced fully his original thinking on these subjects:

·       “Our purpose is to ensure that literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people, and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people fight the enemy with one heart and one mind.

(From Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” May 1942, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 70).

·       “Our literary and art workers must accomplish this task and shift their stand; they must gradually move their feet over to the side of the workers, peasants and soldiers, to the side of the proletariat, through the process of going into their very midst, and into the thick of practical struggles, and through the process of studying Marxism and society. Only in this way, can we have literature and art that are truly for the workers, peasants and soldiers, a truly proletarian literature and art.” [my own emphasis]

(From Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, May 1942, Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 78).

·       “All our literature and art are for the masses of the people, and, in the first place, for the workers, peasants and soldiers; they are created for the workers, peasants and soldiers, and are for their use.”

(Selected Works, Vo. III, p. 84).

·       Mao a bit later in this Talks stressed that literature and art for these classes of workers, peasants and soldiers, are geared to political lines and thinking, and this delineation is paramount and come first:

·       “In the world today, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. [my own emphasis]. There is, in fact, no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from, or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.”

(Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 86).

·       “In literary and art criticism, there are two criteria – the political and the artistic …..What is the relationship between the two? …….each class in every class society has its own political and artistic criteria. But all classes in all class societies invariably put the political criterion first, and the artistic criterion second.” [my own emphasis].

In all the above quoted passages from Mao’s Talks, and the given excerpt from Professor Kirby, we can discern Mao’s thinking – although rather repetitive – that literature and art must be created for the masses of the people in China, and, more so, for the “workers, peasants and soldiers,” who are, to Mao, the “storm-troopers” of the Chinese revolution, and the flag-bearers who make up some 70-80% of China’s population, and who will lead the fight to oust their common enemy – the feudal landlords who, at less than 10% of the population, control 90% of the country resources, and especially the very limited arable land in China. Mao’s adherence to the rural poor who will eventually take over the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in China, was in stark contrast to the traditional Marxist-Leninist theory that the urban proletariat will be the vanguard of the revolution to topple the feudalistic landlords and gentry who control the nation.

To Mao – and he was right – the “workers, peasants and the soldiers – were his main concern and thrust, and literature and art that he wanted to see and produced must adhere to political line first, and artistic views, abilities then follow.

In fact, as early as January 1940 – some 2 years before his famous “Talks on Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature” Mao Zedong had enunciated his thinking:

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes, and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.”

(“On New Democracy” January 1940, Selected Works, Vo. II, p.382).

The Function of Art during the Cultural Revolution:

In view of the above authoritative Mao statements on art and literature, the role of these two aspects and culture during the Cultural Revolution was thus framed totally in the vision of Mao – there would be no other ways art, literature and culture could be interpreted and/or performed, and all such cultures would have to toe his/Communist Party lines. Pain, imprisonment, torture and death would befall anyone who disobey, and any works of art and literature not considered “Maoist” would be destroyed by his avaricious and rampaging Red Guards.

The Cultural Revolution was the time for Mao and Jiang Qing and her Gang of Four to manipulate and guide the choice of cultural resources available. This is especially true when local operas and traditional themes and techniques in opera, literature, comics and paintings, as well as foreign so-called “capitalist” or “revisionist” art, were no longer available.

From the start of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing, Mao’s third wife, had overall influence on both politics and cultural policy; herself trained as an actress, she directed many aspects of cultural production, especially the revolutionary operas and ballets that came to be known as “model works” and, eventually, her “Eight Model Plays” were the only ones allowed to be shown and seen by the public during the Cultural Revolution.

Some recent writings on the Cultural Revolution have stated that, while all the ”model works” culture were propaganda, they claimed they saw some artistic production value – especially in the plays’ use of oral histories with musicians and composers, as well as memories of people who had lived through the period. These authors claimed this was good art, popular, and have remained so, and were also considered innovative. Luden Y., “Making Politics Serve Music: Yu Huiyong, Composer and Minister of Culture” The Drama Review, 2012, was of the view that the musical scores of Yu Huiyong, the principal composer behind the “model works”, “represent the peak of artistic achievement during the Cultural Revolution”.

Some scholars now even think that the Cultural Revolution was “fun” to many, as many different needs were served by the official propagated culture during this period: that is, those who like Beijing opera would be able to see the revolutionary operas; those who preferred ballet, it was available; those who loved symphonic music would have something for their tastes. They thus claimed that these makers of Cultural Revolution propaganda art knew how to combine different genres and different types, to make sure they will capture the audience successfully.

These recent thinking appears to me to be rather sanguine. However much, the “workers, peasants and soldiers” loved one of the most famous operas in “Eight Model Plays” – the Legend of the Red Lantern – for example, or, equally, enthused about the glorious ballet The Red Detachment of Women – one has to remember that during this long period – from 1966 to 1976 – a period of ten years, there was nothing else for these workers, peasants and soldiers, and, in fact, all other citizens in China, to see, as these eight operas and two ballets dominated the stage in all parts of China!

Thus, is it any wonder that the joke “Eight Hundred Million People Watched Eight Shows” (Bayi ren kan bage xi) came about? Or, as Professor Kirby put it simply in his video lecture:

“And people saw them over and over and over and over and over again. And then they saw them again. Ultimately, the masses were not amused.”

These recent authors obviously, has not lived through the ten miserable years of Mao’s Cultural Revolution – when the masses of the people, and, in particular, the workers, peasants and the soldiers – had no entertainment at all but forced to watch these operas and ballets over and over and over and over again – besides reciting and memorizing Mao’s Little Red Book of quotations! If one looked at the musical scores for The Red Detachment of Women – which we did earlier in this Course – and, forgetting the propaganda value of this opera – one cannot helped but be mesmerized by its combination of Chinese and Western symphonic music to underscore the play – but, as said, watch it a few thousand or million times and then pass your final judgment!

The function of art during this Cultural Revolution was subjugated to the political needs of Mao and the Communist Party. The excesses of the fanatic Red Guards and the equally strident and frenzied students, who tore up and destroyed a huge part of China’s illustrious past cultural heritage – both from government archives, libraries, and from private collectors’ homes – cannot in any way, be called “creating the new and make revolution” as some recent authors reasoned, since, what was destroyed, could never be replaced, and these lost parts of China’s cultural past had disappeared forever. It was the Cultural Revolution’s wholesale destruction of traditional Chinese culture, it offered little new culture, save for its propaganda purpose and value.