Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. xi, 246 pp. (Illustrations, B&W photos.) US$27.00, paper. ISBN 9781478014300.
Laurence Coderre’s recently published book explores the concept and production of “newborn socialist things” (shehuizhuyi xinsheng shiwu) that she has described elsewhere as “harbinger[s] of a progressive future emerging in the present.” First emerging during the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), these mass-media socialist commodities were reinvigorated during the latter stages of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the period on which the book focuses. Coderre structures the book around a selection of these “things,” and each is explored in terms of its social and political relations within the context of Chinese socialism. Coderre’s aim for the work, as stated in the introduction, is to bring new connections to light “that have hitherto gone unnoticed” (10), with a view to contributing to understandings of China both past and present.
In addition to the introduction and a concluding coda, the book comprises six chapters, grouped around three themes of modernization and development, ideological discourse and materiality, and bodily (re)mediation. In chapter 1, Coderre looks at the promulgation of the idea of a modern, socialist China—“a sonic imaginary of the Cultural Revolution” (28)—through mass broadcast of recorded sound, via the ubiquitous loudspeaker networks, but also radio broadcasts, and the use of record players and flexi-discs in both urban and rural environments. She argues that these aural networks produced and disseminated an ideologically consistent sense of the nation across the territory of the PRC through sound. In chapter 2, she explores the paradoxical nature of retail and retailers within the context of ongoing class struggle, the ideological dangers of consumerism, and the promotion of officially sanctioned commodities. This is achieved through an examination of department stores and cultural representations of retail through which idealized models of behaviour for shop workers, who went above and beyond to serve their customers (and by extension, the nation), were promoted.
Chapter 3 begins with an exploration of window dressing in retail contexts and the ideological pressures on this form of display, before moving onto the focus of the chapter: an examination of socialist porcelain production (and its consumption), and the rehabilitation of this once bourgeois industry. Coderre centres the discussion on the former imperial kilns at Jingdezhen that, in the post-1949 period, were restructured and reorganized, and ideologically reconfigured as sites of proletarian heritage. Porcelain objects (with an emphasis here on revolutionary figures) were reinvented “as an aesthetic form appropriate to socialism” (98). The production of discourse around commodities in the socialist context is the focus of chapter 4. Coderre sets out how through the publication of a series of didactic political and economic texts, the concept of the socialist commodity—a necessary evil in ideological terms—was applied to the PRC context.
In chapter 5, Coderre turns to the amateur performing arts and the transformative, bodily effects, both on and off stage, of representing revolutionary heroes (and class enemies) in productions of the yangbanxi (model works). She then returns to a discussion of porcelain figures of heroic characters from the yangbanxi and the replication of stationary but dynamic poses across different forms of mass media. She argues that through these processes, the correct revolutionary body was commodified and reproduced. The final chapter extends this argument by exploring the phenomenon of Cultural-Revolution-era table-top and wall mirrors (a niche, but fascinating aspect of cultural production), which Coderre describes as “an important medium for iconographic reproduction and dissemination” (178). Such mirrors were often adorned with aspirational decals of the ubiquitous yangbanxi heroes, revolutionary slogans, and other forms of ideologically charged iconography. Coderre considers the effects and implications of gazing at oneself in the socialist context, wherein continual self-surveillance and self-improvement were imperative.
The book concludes with a brief coda, structured around the present-day Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Sichuan Province and the efforts of a private individual—the eponymous Fan Jianchuan—to collect and display the material culture of the Chinese Revolution. Coderre singles out the collections of mirrors and clocks, and the modes of display employed by Fan that she argues are “emblematic of … the Cultural Revolution’s saturated media environment” (191–192).
As Coderre notes in the introduction, she has selected a non-exhaustive group of these new-born socialist things to explore in her book, necessary due to the vast number of Cultural Revolution-era examples of mass, cultural production available. She has chosen to focus instead on the particular “things” that she found most intriguing. Far from a weakness, this is a key strength of the study. It allows Coderre to explore each example and its ideological foundations and social relations fully and persuasively, underpinned by expansive and thorough research. Her approach here could certainly be extrapolated and applied to other manifestations of socialist production, in different temporal and geographical contexts.
The book is well written and engaging but it is also highly theoretical and presents complex arguments. While, quite reasonably, it does not claim to provide a comprehensive survey of cultural production in the PRC, it assumes prior knowledge and understanding on the part of the reader. Nevertheless, it is an important addition to the existing literature on visual culture, the performing arts, and the concept of the socialist commodity during the Cultural Revolution. Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China is an accomplished, meticulously researched, and fascinating book that will be of interest to scholars of all forms of cultural production in Mao-era China.
Amy Jane Barnes
The Open University, Milton Keynes