Animating Sun Wukong: Shanghai Animation Film Studio's Havoc in Heaven and Symbolic Transformation on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution
Animating Sun Wukong: Shanghai Animation Film Studio's Havoc in Heaven and Symbolic Transformation on the Eve of the Cultural Revolution
Date
2022
Authors
Ayers, Jackson
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Clayton, Cathryn
Department
Asian Studies
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Abstract
This paper attempts to deconstruct the complex intersection of Maoist-era propaganda and Chinese folk-art traditions in the years before China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) by interrogating the symbolic transformation of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, into a hero who justified rebellious action. Specifically, this research analyzes director Wan Laiming’s 1964 film, Havoc in Heaven (Danao Tiangong 大闹天宫), China’s first domestic feature-length animated film. Employing Wan’s memoir and documents from other animators at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), this framework establishes artists as the unit of analysis to study symbolic change between Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propagandistic guidance and the Chinese people. This approach emphasizes the agency and mediating role artists possess when producing art as propaganda. Developing on approaches employed by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney and Alexander Bukh in their research on nationalism, this research encompasses both the narrative content of Havoc in Heaven and the perspectives of SAFS animators towards their work. It argues that a lack of direct party intervention during production and the unexplored frontier of animated film created permissive and productive conditions in which Ohnuki-Tierney’s concept of meconnaissance flourished. Furthermore, Wan and his team reveal that the primary operating principle at SAFS was the development of a nationalized Chinese animation style, founded in traditional folk-arts, and directed towards children’s education, not the fulfillment of Party objectives.
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Keywords
Asian studies,
Animation,
Maoism,
Monkey King,
Propaganda
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59 pages
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