Fuwuyuan on Film: Cinema, Socialist Education, and Service Labor from the Great Leap Forward to Reform and Opening Up

Abstract

As industrial and agricultural production kicked into overdrive during the Great Leap Forward, so too did cinematic production. Factories and agricultural collectives promoted labor models, and the film industry created new cinematic models of heroic production workers. At the same time, valorization of production labor heightened the alienation of workers in the “nonproductive” service sector. To address this situation, service sector work units nominated their own model workers, and the film industry brought tales of service workers to audiences nationwide. Through a close reading of three such films— Fuwuyuan 服务员 (1958), produced during the Great Leap Forward; Manyi bu manyi 满意不满意 (1963), produced just after the Great Leap Forward; and Duan panzi de guniang 端盘子的姑娘 (1981), produced shortly after the implementation of market reforms—this article charts the evolution of cinematic discourse on the value of service work in the economy and society of socialist and early post-socialist China.