Original article | Alma Mater – Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies 2024, Vol. 1(1) 31-41
Xiaofei Tu, Wei Xie
pp. 31 - 41 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.29329/almamater.2024.1053.3 | Manu. Number: jics.2024.003
Published online: September 15, 2024 | Number of Views: 100 | Number of Download: 152
Abstract
In this paper we study the sexual repression and fascination in mainstream films and underground literature during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The Cultural Revolution was launched by the Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong seventeen years after the Party had become the ruling force of China, and ten years from Mao’s death in 1976. On the one hand, it was Mao’s strategy to purge his once comrades who posed threats to his monopoly of power. On the other hand, Mao mobilized the mass movement to preserve the Chinese communist values that Mao believed to have been forgotten by the Party members. As a result, China in the late Mao era was to a large degree a sexually repressed country, under the censorship of Maoist “revolutionary” ideology that considered sex expressions a bourgeois obsession. Nevertheless, politically motivated sexual repression inevitably caused resistance that often took unexpected forms. Although the Cultural Revolution has been the focus of attention for China watchers for a relatively long time, sexuality and contemporary politics in China is a less explored topic. This paper aims to fill the lacunae by looking into some social undercurrents and unprivileged discourses that have escaped scholars’ attention. This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, I discuss the changing attitude of the Chinese Communist Party toward sexuality, providing a historical background for the case studies in the second part that analyze sex repression and fascination in films and underground literature during the Cultural Revolution.
Keywords: Cultural Revolution, Sexual Repression, Chinese Films, Underground Literature, Maoist Ideology
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