Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (27 page)

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Authors: Geremie Barme

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BOOK: Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader
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198. "Mao Zedong" was produced by China Central Television (CCTV) in cooperation with the CPC Central Documentary Research Office, the Political Department of the People's Armed Police, the China Film Archives, Zhongnanhai Xiyuan Publishing House, and Liaoning People's Publishing House. The Central News and Documentary Studio released another major documentary, "Zhongguo chulege Mao Zedong," at about the same time.
199. See Schell,
Mandate of Heaven,
p. 284.
200. See the TV series "
Kewang
"; and Zheng Wanlong and Li Xiaoming,
Kewang
; also, Jianying Zha,
China Pop,
pp. 25-55.
201. "Bianjibude gushi" was the work of Wang Shuo, Feng Xiaogang, et al. See Wang, Feng, et al.,
Bianjibude gushiyoumo dianshi gushi,
2 vols., esp. Feng's "Shei zhu chenfu" in
Bianjibude gushi (renjian xijuji),
pp. 1-55.
202. See "Beijingren zai Niuyue," episode 17, and Mao Zedong, "Abandon

 

Page 67
Illusions and Prepare to Fight" (Diudiao huanxiang, zhunbei douzheng), 14 August 1949, in Mao Zedong,
Mao Zedong xuanji (yijuan ben),
pp. 1372-79.
203. Mao was first represented on the stage in 1951. Yu Shizhi of the People's Theater Company in Beijing appeared that year as Mao in Li Bozhao's (Yang Shangkun's wife) opera
The Long March
(
Changzheng
). See Xu Min, "Banyan Mao Zedongde diyi renfang Yu Shizhi," pp. 4-5.
204. For details of Gu Yue's career, see Guo Xiangxing, "Yingtan `Mao Zedong' dengtanjiGu Yue chudeng yingtan quwen," pp. 22-24. For Wang Ying see Yun Fei, "Cong `Kaitian pidi' dao `Qiushou qiyi'ji qingnian Mao Zedong banyanzhe Wang Ying," pp. 8-9. In her doctoral thesis, ''Recasting the Middle Kingdom: A Leadership Myth in Reel LifeMao Zedong in Propaganda Movies in Contemporary China 1981-1993," Angela Lee Barron plans to deal with the work of both actors at length. For a comment on varied responses on post-1989 Mao movies, see Paul G. Pickowicz, "Velvet Prisons and the Political Economy of Chinese Film-making," p. 220.
205. For details of Yin Hairong, the "Gu Yue of Inner Mongolia," see Huangye Xianzi, "Neimenggu chulege `Mao Zedong,'" p. 33.
206. The eight-part documentary "Tiananmen" was directed by Shi Jian and Chen Jue and produced by The Structure, Wave, Youth, Cinema Experimental Group in Beijing in 1991. Made for CCTV, it was not broadcast on the Mainland.
207. For a partial translation of
WM,
see "Urbling Winter" in Barmé and Minford,
Seeds of Fire,
pp. 105-17. The Chinese title of
To Kill a King
was
Ci Qin.
208. In Western popular cinema Mao has made a memorable, if fleeting appearance. There is Gregory Peck's Ping-Pong game with Mao in
The Chairman
(1969) and the anarcho-surreal appearance of Mao in the extraordinary French documentary "Peking Duck Soup" (see Leys,
Broken Images,
pp. 67-73). Mao also features in the Ping-Pong scene in
Forrest Gump
(1994).
209. See Cheng Jin, "Banren banshen, beiguan ziminMao Zedong wannian shenghuoju `Buluode taiyang' zai Shenzhen shouyan," pp. 82-83.
210. Yi, "Xiandai pingju
Mao Zedong zai 1960
jinwan shangyan."
211. In the 1980s, writers such as Bai Hua used historical plays to make oblique criticisms of Mao (see his "The Golden Lance of the King of Wu," for example), but nothing as direct as the Soviet playwright Mikhail Shatrov's still relatively mild 1988 play "Onwards . . . Onwards . . . Onwards" appeared. In Shatrov's play Stalin's ghost cries: "Leave me in peace," to which comes the reply: "If you only knew how little we want to have to talk about you. The problem is that whatever we turn to today, we find ourselves looking at you." See Hochschild,
The Unquiet Ghost,
p. 4, and Remnick,
Lenin's Tomb,
pp. 70-72. Similarly, the figure of Stalin haunts Tengiz Abuladze's 1980s film
Repentance.
See Denise J. Youngblood, "
Repentance:
Stalinist Terror and the Realism of Surrealism," pp. 139-54.
212. See Barmé, "Critics Now Chip Away at China's Concrete Eyesores," p. 54. Other Mao statues have remained, in particular the coffee-fudge Mao in Shenyang, and the Lincoln-Mao in the entrance hall of the Mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. In mid 1995, state workers, enraged by efforts to close down unprofitable factories in the heavy-industry city of Shenyang, reportedly tried to immolate the Mao statue with gasoline as a protest against the "capitalist" authorities. See Patrick E. Tyler, "With Deng's Influence Waning, Privatizing of China's State Industries Stalls." In regard to the relative immutability and extratemporality of such statues, see Mikhail Yampolsky, "The Shadow of Monuments: Notes on Iconoclasm and Time," pp. 93-112.

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