Educational Media Reviews Online

Making Mao deploys vivid descriptions revealing half a century of Mao Zedong-centered propaganda. From 1949 when the new China was founded and the ten year long catastrophic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) to how contemporary artists depict Mao within pop culture, Mao always remains an icon towards which most Chinese people have a mixture of feelings, including respect, pressure and fear.

The film introduces various types of propaganda chronologically. In the 1950s visual art became the main format for the government to spread information. Influenced by the Soviet Union’s propaganda, Chinese artists adopted a new visual language to replace traditional brush painting. From the first film about the military’s victorious arrival in Beijing to giant posters, paintings, and sculptures of Chairman Mao, “art for the sake of politics” was the only ideology that all artists had to bear in mind.

The propaganda campaign was strengthened when Mao launched the “Great Leap Forward” movement in 1957. He intended to use the dense populations in communes to achieve an industrially developed utopia. Posters and newspapers used bold motivating slogans and labor-centered images. Even when the whole country was faced with the worst famine in history in the early 1960s, Mao continued to hide the truth by spreading visual propaganda about harvests and bountiful food.

The turning point of the violent propaganda started when Mao turned his political allies against his enemies and the Cultural Revolution broke out. The film portrays zealous young Red Guards gathering in Tiananmen Square, loyal people hanging Mao’s pictures on the wall and reciting Mao’s quotations and how state sanctioned badges became the most important fashion accessory. Photographers were authorized to take graphic pictures of the trials and executions of supposed anti-revolutionaries to portray them as traitors. The film also reveals other popular modes of propaganda like the modern Beijing opera that was promoted by Jiang Qing (Mao’s last wife) to depict good and evil in modern China. Ballet dances like Bai Mao Nu (The White-haired Girl) also depicted peasants as heroes and people like landlords as capitalist villains. The whole country became “the red sea” and Mao’s cult reached its peak.

The last part of the film focuses on the creation and development of Mao’s image art in and beyond China after Mao’s death in 1976 and China’s rapid economic development since 1978. In domestic China, the Mao-related collection fad has grown and many valuable old images can be found almost everywhere in antique shops and flea markets. More specifically, Mao’s image is more like a grandfather-like man in contemporary China. Internationally, Andy Warhol’s Mao was exhibited for the first time in Paris in 1974, establishing the beginning of pop culture portraits of Mao. After 1988, Chinese artists began reinterpreting Mao in a rebellious and creative way.

The film also interviews several Chinese artists who were directly involved in the propaganda storm like Zhang Hongtu. Their works tie closely with the government’s propaganda and some of their lives were negatively affected during the Cultural Revolution. Historians including Paul Pickowicz also share their views on the film’s themes.

Throughout the film, original Chinese music from different time periods is used as background music, including songs about worshipping Mao, love for the motherland, and children’s songs, bringing the audience into the original circumstances of the time. Moreover, while subtitles are very helpful for English speakers to understand the native language, the narration of the film is easy to understand and objective. The narrator even uses Western counterparts to explain some people or phenomena. For example, the film compares Beatles’ arrival in the United States with the Chinese military’s arrival in Beijing and James Dean’s death to explain Lei Feng’s death, a solider as well as a role model. There is only one drawback that could be improved upon which is providing more viewing time for some posters and performances. Generally, the film is recommended for academic libraries and college faculty and students.