THE DEVELOPMENT
OF BEIJING OPERA DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
Excerpts from the thesis by Wendy
A. Levine
MAO
ZEDONG, ART, AND THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
ART & COMMUNISM UNDER MAO
The Cultural Revolution was many things
at once, ideological, political, factional, and most certainly involved
with "culture" even in its narrower English connotations.
On April 19, 1966, the Cultural Revolution was formally
announced in the People's Daily (Renmin Ribao) newspaper. What followed
was a decade marked by social and political turmoil, often referred to
by contemporary Chinese scholars as "the lost decade." The primary player
in this revolution was Mao Zedong, a Chinese Communist Party official whose
rise to power from the early 1930's until his death in 1976 had an immeasurable
impact on the political and social development of the People's Republic
of China.
MARX-LENIN INFLUENCE
As far back as 1905 Lenin pointed out
emphatically that our literature and art should "serve the millions and
tens of millions of working people." Of course, among the numerous people
of culture, writers, artists and other literary and artistic workers engaged
in a great struggle for liberation together with the Communist Party...
In the ideological climate of China during the Cultural
Revolution, the classical sources of Marxism- Leninism carried great weight
in almost every sphere. Communist Party policy on the censorship and exploitation
of traditional Chinese arts and literature were based on Mao's interpretations
of the writings of famous Soviet Communist leaders Karl Marx and Vladimir
Lenin. Particularly appealing to Mao was the flexibility with which Marxist
theory addressed the arts. As author Ellen R. Judd suggests:
TALKS AT YENAN CONFERENCE ON ART AND
LITERATURE
We must also have a cultural army, which
is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the
enemy.
At the Yenan Conference on Art and Literature, Mao
Zedong presented his view of the new role of art and literature in a series
of "Talks." To secure the proper development of art and literature, Mao
developed a multi-faceted plan of attack, which he revealed at the Yenan
conference. CONTINUE-->
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