Includes bibliographical references (pages [197]-215) and index.
Contents:
Ma Ji's "Ode to friendship" and the failures of revolutionary language / Laurence Coderre. Part 3: Laughter and language. Laughter, ethnicity, and socialist utopia : Five golden flowers / Ban Wang -- Revolution plus love in village China : land reform as political romance in Sanliwan Village / Charles A. Laughlin -- Joking after rebellion : performing Tibetan-Han relations in the Chinese military dance "Laundry song" (1964) / Emily Wilcox -- Part 2: Intermedial laughter. Intermedial laughter : Hou Baolin and Xiangsheng Dianying in mid-1950s China / Xiaoning Lu -- Fantastic laughter in a socialist-realist tradition? : the nuances of "satire" and "extolment" in The secret of the magic gourd and its 1963 film adaptation / Yun Zhu -- Humor, vernacularization, and intermedial laughter in Maoist Pingtan / Li Guo -- Part 3: Laughter and language. Propaganda, play, and the pictorial turn : Cartoon (Manhua Yuekan), 1950-1952 / John A. Crespi -- The revolutionary metapragmatics of laughter in Zhao Shuli's fiction / Roy Chan -- Huajixi, heteroglossia, and Maoist language / Ping Zhu -- Ma Ji's "Ode to friendship" and the failures of revolutionary language / Laurence Coderre.
Summary:
"During the Mao years, laughter in China was serious business. Simultaneously an outlet for frustrations and grievances, a vehicle for socialist education, and an object of official study, laughter brought together the political, the personal, the aesthetic, the ethical, the affective, the physical, the aural, and the visual. The ten essays in Maoist Laughter convincingly demonstrate that the connection between laughter and political culture was far more complex than conventional conceptions of communist indoctrination can explain. Their sophisticated readings of a variety of genres--including dance, cartoon, children's literature, comedy, regional oral performance, film, and fiction--uncover many nuanced innovations and experiments with laughter during what has been too often misinterpreted as an unrelentingly bleak period. In Mao's China, laughter helped to regulate both political and popular culture and often served as an indicator of shifting values, alliances, and political campaigns. In exploring this phenomenon, Maoist Laughter is a significant correction to conventional depictions of socialist China"-- Back cover.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.