love songs and the Great Leap: the role of a youth culture in the revolutionary phase of China's economic development

Abstract

he Chinese Communists believe that all art is politically motivated and propagandistic in nature and that the use of symbols is crucial to winning the people's compliance with revolutionary goals. In this paper, I analyze a small corpus from one genre of Communist propaganda, namely love songs. The songs reveal some basic values—a kind of “root paradigm” in the form of a “protracted courtship”—that combine traditional, popular, and socialist motifs aimed at promoting the family revolution and economic development. One way the Communists attempt both to legitimize and to restrict the role of erotic feelings in the new social structure is to give greater rein to their expression in the love songs of the national minorities. However, in spite of Communist attempts to elevate the popular taste and their expressions in love songs, the purely popular song traditions continue to find voice among the masses especially during periods of revolutionary relaxation.W