Jane,+Rachel,+Daniel+MPP

media type="file" key="rachajanieshalala.mov"


 * Rachel Choi Individual Review**

Our group's propaganda project was about "Who are not communists?" We made a short video about how to tell who is not a real communist. There were few of the things we came up with. We decided that citizens who accepted western cultures, followed old cultures and habits, did not show enough pride, read anti-revolutionary books instead of the Red Book, messed up with national stretch(exercise) and marching, and questioned the Red Guards were considered to be anti-revolutionists and were "taken care" by the government. We used hyperbole to make the video seem funnier, but most of the facts in our video were true.

This project connected to the themes of the Cultural Revolution by stating the reality of the revolution and what was actually going on in China. After doing this project, I realized how harsh the Chinese Red Guards were to the citizens. Through many propaganda and posters, the government tried to make people believe that the Cultural Revolution was a good thing and everyone was happy; however, in reality, many were mistreated and had to live under injustice. This was a good opportunity to rethink about the reality of the Cultural Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party.


 * Jane Woo Individual Review**

My group - me, Rachel Choi, and Daniel Lee - decided to create an "instructional video" for the Chinese masses during th Cultural Revolution on how to tell if someone is NOT a Communist. It lists many "traits", both general and specific, that the people should look out for in others that could label them as a capitalist. Though some traits were exaggerated, they were still based on true things that happened during the Cultural Revolution.

In some ways, our video is almost a parody about the corruptness of the CCP during the Cultural Revolution. The victims in the video are often "beaten up" for seemingly trivial reasons, yet many of these reasons were true. One "trait" of a capitalist is "Walking slow in a parade". In the document we read by Mei Zhong, Zei Zhong's father was beaten and punished for not walking "vigorously enough" during a parade. The middle schoolteacher we read about in another document was labelled as an "enemy of the people" because he got into an argument with one of the Red Guards, another trait that is addressed in our video. Anyone that does anything against the motives of the CCP and Red Guard were immediately labelled as capitalists and as enemies, even if the reason was extremely insignificant. This shows that the CCP members and the Red Guard used communism as an excuse to get away with their own motives.

Daniel Lee Individual Review
My group, including Jane and Rachel, made a video about finding someone who is not a communist. We tried to make the video based on true facts, but we also wanted our video to be fun. So we decided to act the things out in a funny way. So before acting, we thought of things that we can actually act out in a funny way. Our list included factors like accepting or agreeing to western culture, not smiling in front of Mao, not dancing in the right beat, questioning the Red Guard, and other things like not reading the Little Red book.

I personally think our video will be one of the funniest among all the projects. Basically, the whole video is about someone going against the idea of Cultural Revolution, and getting punished by a little hammer. In order to make the video funny, we used little squeaky(?) hammers to punish people. Our video, although is funny, shows truth that actually occurred. I am sure it wasn't funny like our video, but factors like talking against the Red Guard was really a reason for the Red Guards to punish people. I enjoyed my project, although it is a bit embarrassing.