The movie To Live gave great insight to the plight of a family during the "revolution" and "liberation" of China. The thing that never ceases to amaze me about communist countries is how easily people are persuaded and convinced that it's the right way. Even when the families went from being landlords to peasants and had nothing, they still thought that communism was a good idea. Granted, the idea of communism is good and Mao Zedong's intentions started out nobly, but there has to be a point where someone thinks that something isn't right. I suppose that when all one knows is domination (because in Chinese history there was always an emperor or king), the hope of equality and no class structure is a blessing.
The thing that still confuses me is how the idea of communism evolved into the near totalitarianism it's infamous for. I guess that growing up in our society makes it difficult to even begin to understand or grasp the concept of a society like that.
Posted by leah at October 21, 2004 01:54 AMI asked myself similar questions during "to live". Why is it that everyone is persuaded so easily to communism? First thing that came to mind is that this is just a film interpretation/representation of reality. I think the movie exaggerated the level of happiness and enthusiasm for communism. Although, "morning sun" did allowed us to get a glimpse of how fervent revolutionary zeal was. The second thing that I thought of is that totalitarian regimes usually play on the weaknesses and insecutities of the people. The Communist persuaded people because it made everyone feel important and gave them a sense that they were a part of something bigger, larger, than they had ever thought. You're right, it is as an outsider capitalist/American, hard to understand the psychology around why landlords were suddenly content with a fraction of the land and assets they once had during the previous regime, communism had to have changed their fundamental beliefs significantly. We know that because they traded in their bibles and temple scrolls for red books filled with stuff that Mao said. Lastly, i think the natural course of communism is to become a totalitarian regime due to the fact that you have a group of people who make decisions for a whole society.
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