The Dis/appearance of Animals in Animated Film during the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Conventional studies of the Chinese Cultural Revolution usually come from a human-centered perspective that focuses on politics, revolution, class struggle, trauma, resistance, and agency as represented in such established artistic forms as literature, feature film, theatre, painting, and poster. This kind of approach is presence-centered by drawing attention to the most visible scenarios under the revolutionary limelight at that time. In contrast, this article calls attention to what was invisible in the much-discussed cultural scene at that time: how animals were represented and underrepresented in the marginalized genre of animation. Animation, like fairytales, fables, and parables, is usually an artistic form of fantasy full of (talking) animals. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, animated films were replete with (anthropomorphic) animals. As animated films began to be dominated by politicized human actions in the mid 1960s, animals systematically disappeared from the silver screen until the late 1970s. The Chinese Cultural Revolution can be redefined as a decade of absent animals. However, these animals did not vanish completely during the Cultural Revolution; rather they took refuge in the bodies of ethnic minorities and villains, waiting for opportunities to return, get revenge, and talk back. The disappearance of animals in the mid 1960s marked the start of the Cultural Revolution. When the animals finally returned to the silver screen in the late 1970s, the seemly impregnable ideology of the Cultural Revolution gradually disintegrated.