Quite catchy, in a Communist kitsch sort of way. The video, posted on tudou (via ChinaSMACK), has been doing the rounds of Chinese internet forums, and although people commenting on it have speculated that it will get “harmonized”, it hasn’t been taken down quite yet.
As any tourist who has travelled through China knows, Communist kitsch is everywhere. Like many before me, my first trip to China saw me bring home torn replicas of Communist-era propaganda posters, and a very cool lighter in the shape of Mao’s little red book. I had taken classes on Chinese history, both old and modern, and so I was fully aware of the events in the past few decades in China, but when I put the poster on the wall of my college dorm room, it didn’t occur to me that anyone might take offence — until my Chinese American roommate made a comment about the millions of people who died under Mao. I decided to take the poster down.
A lot of people do have these posters on their walls, and I’ve had discussions with friends on the question of why (in general) it’s ok for a Western hipster to have a purely ironic poster of Chairman Mao on the wall, when a poster of Hitler, or Pol Pot, would feel completely inappropriate. A video like the one above is obviously playing with the memory of the Maoist propaganda machine in a way that is healthy, and probably not entirely without effect, given that the assumption among Chinese web users is that the government will see the video as mocking the Communist legacy, of which it is the heir, and will block it. A part of the nature of humor is to test the limits of what is politically and socially acceptable. But other forms of Communist memorabilia aren’t explicitly funny, or ironic, but are still popular.
A part of it has to do with what these symbols convey. A symbol only has the meaning that those who communicate through that symbol assign to it. A swatstika continues to carry the meaning, at least to some degree, that its bearer supports Nazism, while being a Maoist is for young people today such a remote possibility that Chinese communist kitsch is assumed to be just kitsch. It’s also obviously possible to evoke certain aspects of history without endorsing everything about that time period (when Americans deify their Founding Fathers, for example, that doesn’t mean they think slavery was ok).
At the same time, China’s own relationship with its past is complicated, and a Mao poster in a rural home in China is likely to be a genuine expression of reverence for the Great Helmsman. The modern state is very much the direct successor to the Communist regime responsible for the suffering of millions under Mao, and there has been no public reckoning or break with the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. Anything related to the Tiananmen Square protests is censored, and if published online, will quickly get harmonized. For lots of people in China — especially the older generations, and people in the countryside – the Mao souvenirs aren’t kitsch, they’re real. And for lots of people with Chinese heritage in the West, the painful memories of starvation and persecution are what first come to mind when they see these symbols.
And so for people who believe that Mao was more than 30% wrong, having a Mao poster on the wall should probably be treated in the same way as displaying symbols representing other controversial figures — fine if you’re sure what message those seeing the symbol will interpret from it, and you’re comfortable with conveying that message, but to be treated with caution when there’s a risk of causing unintentional offence. In other words, fewer Mao posters on the wall, and more videos like the one above.