Ugly Intellectuals Everywhere

This chapter uses theater and cinema to illustrate the intensifying official denunciation of the intellectual from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. It uses Third Sister Liu, the famous musical drama produced during the Great Leap Forward, to show how the party mobilized state and society to attack those regarded as intellectuals. The attack deepened schisms and disaffection within the educated population. The chapter then turns to the notable film Early Spring in February to highlight the struggle to redefine the intellectual after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. Sponsored by some party leaders, the movie portrayed the intellectual positively, but it became a nationwide target of attack. Although cadres and others had difficulties understanding the official condemnations, layers of virulent ideas, idioms, and imageries about the intellectual saturated the nation shortly before it was engulfed by the Cultural Revolution.