Supporters or Saboteurs: Deviated Experiences of Maoist Film Propaganda in Rural China

Maoist China is well-known for its fervour in establishing a total propaganda system. It was during this period that film propaganda unprecedentedly reached even the remotest areas and the majority of the Chinese rural population had an opportunity to watch a film for the first time. Cinema became not only a propaganda tool but also a mediating environment in which various kinds of cinematic experiences were able to played out. Taking a rural perspective, this article investigates the early propagation and reception of film at the grassroots level in an authoritarian regime. By analysing the deviated responses and actions that threatened to invalidate the operation of film propaganda, I examine under what specific contexts that heterogeneous experiences were possible in a system that aimed to demolish them. I contend that the on and off malfunction of early Maoist film propaganda was inevitable, owing to the nature of spectacular effect embedded in the cinematic mechanism, the rural living experiences that contextualized the practices of film propaganda, and the paradoxical elements inherent in the propaganda institution.