Download Wendy Winata Diane Riggenbach Humanities 10.1a September 30

Wendy Winata
Diane Riggenbach
Humanities 10.1a
September 30, 2010
The Effect of Images in Propaganda
During the rule of the Communist party in China, Mao Zedong used propaganda to
send messages to his people. He often used propaganda posters as a media to persuade
people to follow what Mao said. The meaning of propaganda itself is to suggest something
that is not true, while Mao used propaganda posters every time he shared an idea with his
people. He used propaganda posters because literature and art were important parts of the
growth of China, the images in the poster could persuade other people, and they were able
to alter the reality by using drawings. The people believed in those posters and so they also
believed in Mao.
Mao considered literature and arts as revolutionary machines. On May 2, 1942, at
the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, he said that literature and arts should be operated
as powerful weapons to unite and educate the people and to destroy the enemy, and also
to help the people to fight the enemy with one heart and mind. After this speech, literature
and art became an important role to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It became the
CCP’s propaganda machine and it was used to serve the CCP revolution. Even before the
CCP took control of China, they took writers and artists and ordered them to make different
forms of arts that would be able to unite, educate, and help the people of China to fight the
enemy. After they took control in 1949, the demand of propaganda increased, and mass
propaganda was needed. The leaders needed to educate the people with communism, so
many political propaganda posters were created. The posters that were created during that
time basically have images of people living happily together under communism and Mao
Zedong. These images made people of China think that communism is a very good change in
China, and so the people started to support Mao and the government.
A few years later, Mao planned a project called “the Great Leap Forward”. The goal
was to push China’s industrial growth, so that they could exceed the industrial power of
other more developed countries. Of course, this plan would need a lot of labor, and Mao
would have to convince a lot of people to like this plan. At first, the people didn’t really
want to cooperate because they would have to give up their farms, work on a communal
farming, and work harder for industrial growth. They also would not get as much profit. So,
many propaganda posters were created about these issues. Some of the posters have
agricultural themes while some have industrial themes, but they all basically have the same
meaning, which is that by communal farming the crops and livestock would have better
quality and by working together for industrial growth and learning from the Soviet Union,
China could exceed the industrial power of other western countries in 15 years. By just
looking at the images, people were convinced and they started working harder. One
example was, one of the posters showed a farmer petting a very big hog, and the poster
said, “The hogs of the commune must be raised to be fat and big!” Because of this, people
were interested in working at communal farms, even though they were not so interested
before. Another example was the poster that showed a man a drawing of a futuristic
spacecraft, and the poster said, “Study the Soviet Union, to advance to the world level of
science.” By showing a futuristic spacecraft, people would start to imagine being able to
build something with great technology, and they would also imagine what if they were able
to take part in making that spacecraft, so they became interested.
Other than convincing people on following the plan, propaganda posters are also
used to alter the reality. After 30 million people died due to the famine, Mao realized that
the Great Leap Forward was a failure, but it didn’t stop him in making more propaganda
posters. The government didn’t want to appear as bad leaders, so they announced to the
people that the famine was caused by flooding and other natural disasters, and sadly,
people believed them. Then, they start making more propaganda posters, but this time it
was a little bit more relaxing. During this time, the government wanted to hide the famine
from the people so they started to show all the successes that had been achieved, in the
propaganda posters. The propaganda posters were less political because they were just
showing pictures of people, mostly beautiful women, smiling and showing a happy
expression. There were also some posters that had Mao in it. There was a series of 5 posters
that had Mao, and the series was about Mao visiting a village, and then suddenly he found a
child who was sick. Mao directly put the sick child in his car and drove him to a hospital, and
then when he was cured he took the child back to his mother. This series was basically
about Mao caring for the people of China, especially children.
Mao used propaganda posters to manipulate the minds of the people of China. Most
of the people were not very educated so they were easily convinced by the propaganda
posters, which mostly were not true. Mao succeeded in using literature and arts as a
weapon.