Maoist laughter / edited by Ping Zhu, Zhuoyi Wang, and Jason McGrath.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ping, Zhu, editor.

Wang, Zhuoyi, 1974- editor.

McGrath, Jason, 1966- editor.

Series:

Hong Kong scholarship online.

Hong Kong scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Laughter--China.

Laughter.

China--Politics and government--1949-1976.

China.

China--Social life and customs--1949-1976.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 234 pages)

Place of Publication:

Hong Kong : HKU Press, 2020.

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.

Contents:

Introduction : the study of laughter in the Mao era / Ping Zhu

Part 1: Utopian laughter. 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.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on May 15, 2020).

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789882204508

9882204503

OCLC:

1128813968