MCLC: Lei Feng flops at the box office

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Lei Feng flops at the box office
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (3/11/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/world/asia/in-china-unpopular-films-sugge
st-fading-of-icon.html

BEIJING JOURNAL
In China, Cinematic Flops Suggest Fading of an Icon
By DAN LEVIN

BEIJING — It has been five decades since Mao Zedong decreed that the
altruistic, loyal soldier Lei Feng should be a shining star in the
Communist Party’s constellation of propaganda heroes. But last week, on
the 50th anniversary of that proclamation, came unmistakable signs that
despite the Chinese government’s best efforts, Lei Feng’s glow is fading.

National celebrations of “Learn From Lei Feng Day,” which was observed
last Tuesday, turned into something of a public relations debacle after
the party icon’s celluloid resurrection in not one but three films about
his life was thwarted by a distinctly capitalist weapon: the box office
bomb.

In cities across the country, many theaters were unable to sell even a
single ticket, an embarrassment for the Communist Party, which has been
seeking to burnish its moral luster during the annual legislative sessions
of’s rubber-stamp Parliament taking place in the capital, where Lei Feng
was venerated as an inspiration for all.

Also last Tuesday, the octogenarian photographer famous for taking 200
photos of Lei Feng suffered a fatal heart attack after giving his last of
over 1,260 speeches honoring Lei Feng to a roomful of military personnel
in China’s northeast. Chinese media widely reported his dramatic death,
featuring footage of the photographer slumped in his chair and receiving
CPR, and finally a photograph of his corpse reverently draped with a
Communist Party flag.

The unwelcome developments in the Lei Feng narrative subverted the
carefully scripted celebration of the Communist role model. By the time
Lei Feng died at 21 — in 1962, slain by a falling telephone pole — a slew
of government paparazzi had captured him fixing military trucks, darning
his fellow soldiers’ socks or diligently studying the works of Chairman
Mao by flashlight. After his death, a diary detailing his many selfless
acts was supposedly discovered and then swiftly disseminated among the
masses to be studied and, it was hoped, emulated.

As the Communist Party formally orchestrates a transfer of power to a new
generation of leaders, the nation has been fixated on what many say is
society’s declining morality, highlighted by a seemingly incessant flood
of government corruption scandals replete with bribes and mistresses.

Last month, a Beijing woman was caught using a silicone prosthesis to
pretend she was pregnant and fool subway riders into giving her their
seats. Last week, a fresh round of outrage erupted after news spread that
a carjacker in the northeastern city of Changchun had strangled a baby boy
he had found in a stolen vehicle and then buried him in the snow. After
thousands took to the streets for a candlelight vigil honoring the infant,
the authorities banned further media coverage of the episode.

The evolving cult of Lei Feng — from the man to the myth — opens a window
into how the Communist Party has sought to adapt ideologically while
remaining firmly in control of a rapidly changing society. While Mao used
him as a tool for inspiring absolute political obedience, propaganda
officials have been struggling to rebrand Lei Feng and make him relevant
to a nation where smartphones vastly outnumber copies of Mao’s Little Red
Book.

Today, social media apps include Micro Lei Feng, meant to inspire good
deeds among the technologically adept. The state media has been
championing him as “a role model for Chinese society today as the
government is trying to improve the social moral environment.”

But experts agree that the relentless portrayal of Lei Feng as a panacea
for China’s social ills has rung hollow
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/world/asia/lei-feng-day-draws-chinese-cy
nicism.html> for those who have doubts about the party’s moral authority.

“The Chinese government no longer enjoys high credibility among people,”
said Zhang Ming, a professor of political science at Renmin University in
Beijing. “It begs the question: the government keeps bringing up the Lei
Feng spirit and calling on people to be more helping to others, but what
has the government done to follow the Lei Feng spirit?”

At a time when China’s incoming president, Xi Jinping, has begun a highly
publicized campaign against corruption that cynics say is largely
cosmetic, many wonder whether Lei Feng the saint should be buried once and
for all. For them, the box office disaster of the Lei Feng-themed films is
the nail in the coffin.

In the central Chinese city of Taiyuan, in Shanxi Province, an employee of
a cinema confessed that it had pulled the films — “Young Lei Feng,” “Lei
Feng’s Smile” and “Lei Feng 1959” — after the theaters remained empty on
opening day.

The films suffered a similar fate in coastal Nanjing. Reached by
telephone, a Nanjing International Cinema employee said the cinema had not
sold a single ticket for “Young Lei Feng” and had canceled further
screenings. An employee at another theater, the Nanjing Xingfu Lanhai
Cinema, said, “ ‘Young Lei Feng’ has been on the screen for four days but
no tickets have been sold so far.”

Even in Beijing, where thousands of delegates to the National People’s
Congress were gathering, the films were doing poorly. One local cinema
reported it had sold only 43 tickets for “Young Lei Feng” in four days —
compared with over 450 for “Les Misérables.”

When Chinese media reports revealed that the public was largely ignoring
the films, the studio behind “Young Lei Feng” denied it was a dud, saying
an article in The Yangtse Evening Post about dismal ticket sales in
Nanjing was incorrect. “This story has imposed irreparable negative
impacts on this movie and has misled people into believing it’s lousy,”
the Xiaoxiang Film Group said in a statement.

Ardent Lei Feng supporters are eager to portray the films’ poor
performance as a problem with form, not content. “Lots of people think the
‘Lei Feng spirit’ is a 50-year-old cliché,” said Wang Wei, director of the
Lei Feng Spirit Research Institute in China’s northeastern Liaoning
Province. “Once they hear about those movies, they instantly decided that
they are not worth seeing. These films should have adopted new propaganda
angles to attract audiences.”

The government is instead resorting to old-school tactics to fill
theaters. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has
ordered film studios and cinemas to better promote the films and has
exhorted party cadres to organize group viewings, particularly by rural
audiences.

But the tattered hagiography has lost more than just its cinematic appeal.
At the “Forever Lei Feng” exhibition in Beijing on Friday, almost all
visitors were government workers or schoolchildren, even though municipal
officials had sent a text message to millions of cellphone subscribers
announcing the show.

Strolling past large propaganda posters of a uniformed Lei Feng grinning
at the camera while polishing cars, and display cases filled with Lei
Feng’s image on lighters, backpacks and T-shirts, the crowd of sailors and
city maintenance workers — all of them had been dispatched by their
government employers — posed for photos before heading quickly for the
exits.

Zhen Lifu, a professor at Peking University who was volunteering as a
docent on Friday, spent the day lecturing about Lei Feng’s generosity
toward his comrades. But away from the crowds, Mr. Zhen admitted that he
thought Lei Feng himself would have been depressed by the moral decay that
plagues modern Chinese society.

“Frankly, Lei Feng wouldn’t be the only one,” he said. “These days, we’re
all pretty dissatisfied, which is why we need Lei Feng.”

Amy Qin and Shi Da contributed research.