living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Monday, December 09, 2002 "Animal farm" in Beijing I could not believe that "Animal Farm" could be allowed on stage in Beijing, almost at the same time of 16th Party Congress. (complete story from LAT). If the play past the censorship after the Cultrual Ministry carefully read the script or the original novel, I should say China's political atmosphere is much much more liberal than before. Here are some highlights in the play of Chinese edition: "Parallels with Communist Chinese history are everywhere, from the way the head pig, Napoleon, banishes a rival to the fact that one of his henchmen in the book, Squealer, has been made into his wife in the play. Older Chinese draw comparisons with the way Mao Tse-tung turned on his close associate, Liu Shaoqi, in the 1960s and how infamous Madame Mao became her husband's key advisor and proxy. Then there are the bureaucratic and ideological campaigns -- the egg-production committee, the wool-whitening movement -- and the inflated production statistics in the play that evoke Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s, during which millions of Chinese starved to death. And in one dramatic scene, a hen who refuses to conform is tortured into confessing to being a spy and eventually commits suicide after the other animals shun her. In Orwell's version, such "traitors" are ordered executed by Napoleon. But for Chinese viewers, making the hen die in despair by her own hand recalls the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when neighbor denounced neighbor and fanatical Red Guards hounded "class enemies," some of whom took their own lives to escape persecution. At the end of the play, the tyrant Napoleon -- well-fed and comfortable while the other beasts slave away on the farm -- welcomes back his former enemies, the humans, and toasts them with champagne. In his smug demeanor and back-slapping official rhetoric, ordinary Chinese recognize the fat cats of a corrupt Communist Party that now welcomes capitalists into the fold. ..... in the original text -- including the Chinese translation -- the animals call one another "comrade," a politically loaded term still in widespread use in China. But in the play, the newly liberated animals explicitly reject "comrade" as too human and instead choose a less-charged designation meaning "beast."' posted by lmeimei @12:52 PM| permanent link| | |
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