MCLC: CR comic book

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: sean macdonald <smacdon2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: CR comic book
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Thanks for this. This posting is a miniature work of archeology. Many of
the old revolutionary xiaoren shu (小人书 "little person books" ) have been
republished. A few years ago I recall seeing bookshelves devoted to these
reprints in the major bookstore chains. Despite the propagandistic slant
of many stories, some of these comics are superbly done, both from the
point of view of story, and the art, which employed many masters of line
drawing and brush/pen and ink. These "hand-drawn" comics are important
reminders of a global form of "graphic novel" or whatever you want to call
it. The idea of applying ink to paper is in some cases seen as a somewhat
residual type of print media nowadays. In the US for example, many artists
are obliged to work in digital, although in many cases the paper still
gets scanned for the print and online versions. Japanese manga is one
industry that has kept up black and white ink on paper comics. A form that
requires skill and productivity.

The xiaoren shu was not always just propaganda. Even in the PRC, in the
1950s and early 1960s many of these comics were adaptations of classical
stories from Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms and
many many others, some of which might surprise contemporary readers. These
type of comics had been published as far back as the 1930s, and included
some very inventive use of literary models and original series as well. I
rather like the Hong Kong martial arts stuff from the 1970s (Wendy Siuyi
Wong has a fine volume with mostly covers but also short intros about this
topic) which was very much a hybrid of US super-hero and Japanese manga.
Violent as hell too.

That being said, the comments on this posting are fairly interesting. This
comic is an especially extreme example of revolutionary narrative. Anyone
who has read online discussions knows, despite the censorship, there is a
lot of passionate discussion about all sorts of topics. I found these
comments reveal rather reductive assumptions about the revolutionary
period based on the last ten years of that period called the Cultural
Revolution. 

Cultural production for children is important for the adult messages it
reveals. Such material conveniently opens up ideological attitudes in
direct, sometimes humorous, and even disturbing ways. The trick is to be
able to catch the stuff that is closer to us. They don't make characters
as easy to read as Xiao Hong anymore, do they?

All the best,

Sean