Is the Long March a dream? Imagination, nationalism and multiple declination of a real mythology

Abstract

Abstract Whilst the historical reality of the Long March is not to be questioned, many voices rise to question its details and the actual meaning of this myth-making page of Chinese history. This article analyses two complementary texts that offer compelling readings on the contemporary renegotiation of the national imaginary that the Long March informs. First, there will be a discussion of Wo de changzheng/My Long March (Zhai, 2005), a propaganda film celebrating the heroic retreat/expedition. This movie – among others – calls attention to the unfading genre of propaganda films that elaborate new and different forms of nation-building imaginary for the twenty-first century. I will later draw a parallel with the contemporary artist Feng Mengbo’s installation Long March: Restart (2009), contextualizing it in the movement of ‘art ludique’ or ‘entertainment art’ (as it has been brilliantly termed by Jean-Jacques Launier and Jean-Samuel Kriegk [2011]), which is both an individual and collective new art form redefining the boundaries between video game and museum, CGI special effects and comic books, and high- and low-brow consumption of cultural imaginary. What is particularly challenging in this parallel is that both the film and the installation could be viewed and appreciated in Beijing without censorship. The contemporary presence of both mainstream ‘main melody’ film and (possibly) subversive art, of state-sponsored entertainment and consumerist pleasure-driven art, has reshaped the field of visual culture in contemporary China, far from a clear-cut dichotomy of independent-official–propaganda-dissident.