JiYoon+Hyun

Throughout this propaganda our group produced, our main goal was to show how Mao became a prophet-figure in the minds of many Chinese during the Great Cultural Revolution. As you can see the two chidren holding up the "__Little Red Book,__" we are representing the important meaning of Chinese believing in Mao's words, which was the whole purpose of the "__Little Red Book.__" This book was not only a book of quotations by Chairman Mao, it was another name for Mao Zedong's //Selected Works// which was a compilation of his quotations. Mao's status and image was reaching new heights when all Chinese began to study his book of quotations and memorize passages from the book. There are reasons to why we porpotioned the characters put in the propaganda. We wanted to at first, show how Mao was a "father-like" figure by surrounding the two children who seems to be excited to be with Mao holding the "__Little Red Book//.//__" The reason to why Mao is located in the center (and in the middle of the flag) was to portray how he was superior and dominant to his powerful country, China.

To connect to some actual quotations by Mao Zedong and to our reason to why making the kind of propaganda we made, we are able to make note of what the propaganda is trying to tell us. As to why the children are dressed up in their school uniforms and their expressions of delight facing Mao addresses to this following quote, "Protect the interests of the youth, women, and children- provide assistance to young students..., and give young people and children a useful education." Mao not only valued education highly, he knew that children needed to be educated in order to lead his powerful China. As to why we chose the youth to draw was because of Mao's quote about the youth and their strong spirit, "The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last anaylsis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning." Not only Mao places his hope to the youth, we can see that he himself is surrounding the children to show how he believes in the young ones and their energy.

It was quite interesting to form our own version of propaganda about the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong's teachings because our main goal was to set a statement we wanted people to get right away from the propaganda (which is the whole point of making one). Not only does the propaganda increase the reputation of Mao Zedong, we are able to see what Mao believed was right and how many fully honored Mao through propaganda. Although other propaganda might have given more impact, by providing a happy and joyful image of Mao Zedong, the children, and China was portraiting the importance of Mao during the Great Cultural Revolution. Just to add on as a side note, It was great working with my group on our 'last project for Asian Studies' (gasp) because we all distributed our work equally and everyone contributed a lot of their time to work on the propaganda. Hope everyone likes our poster!

(P.S. Mr. Osterweil, thank you so much for an awesome semester introducing us to the world of Asian Studies. Be safe in California!)