Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge: The Creation and Mass Consumption of a Personality Cult [Paperback]

Melissa Schrift (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An important contribution to our understanding of the Cultural Revolution and its place in Chinese culture." -- William Jankowiak, author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City

"Shows how mundane objects were transformed into sacred icons of revolutionary ideology. Offers new insights into . . . the Cultural Revolution." -- J. L. Watson, author of Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia

From the Back Cover

With the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, the regime of Chairman Mao Zedong launched a propaganda campaign aimed at disseminating inspiring images of the chairman to a skeptical populace. Thus was born the "Mao badge," a political icon in the form of a pin that was widely distributed to create, sustain, and inflate the Mao personality cult during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Scholars estimate that over two billion Mao badges, featuring over fifty thousand different designs and themes, were produced.

As China now enters an era in which people can more openly express their views about the Cultural Revolution, these icons have taken on new meanings, and people are wearing and talking about them in subversive ways. Melissa Schrift suggests that the badges developed "lives" that far surpass the intentions of their creators, as the Chinese ironically commodified them, both during the Cultural Revolution and today. During the Mao years, people wore the objects to symbolize their unquestioned loyalty to Mao. Yet even then many Chinese subverted the badges' symbolic meaning. Using them in socially approved rituals, they gained a measure of political credibility that masked their practice of prohibited customary rites.

Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge is a work of cultural history that contributes to our understanding not only of Chinese society but, more generally, of strategies people employ in responding to and transforming the meaning of propaganda campaigns and symbols.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813529379
• ISBN-13: 978-0813529370
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,333,250 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Human Face for the Cultural Revolution, April 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge: The Creation and Mass Consumption of a Personality Cult (Library Binding)

A little over a year ago, one of my student's mothers presented me with one of her Chairman Mao pins (badges). As an American living in China, I wasn't sure what to think, or even if I should accept it--and in accordance to tradition, I did turn it down twice before accepting it. I remember her saying that she had been "crazy about collecting Chairman Mao pins" but I didn't realize until reading "A Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge" how widespread the phenomenon had been, nor the various reasons for this obsession.

Melissa Schrift's book is well-writen, informative, and interesting. She escapes the overly technical trappings of so many academic analyses of the Cultural Revolution and helps the reader understand some of the subtleties of the Cultural Revolution without patronizing her audience.

In my opinion, anyone interested in studying the Cultural Revolution or Mao's cult of personality needs to read this book.