Conspiracy Film Criticism and the Gang of Four as Cinematic Auteur

Abstract

In the months following the Gang of Four’s arrest, prominent film industry workers in China published articles denouncing the Gang’s influence in Cultural Revolution film production. A canon of movies called conspiracy films (yinmou dianying) quickly emerged, films that were officially censured for complicity in Gang attempts to usurp the party through control of mass entertainment. Conspiracy film criticism consolidated Deng-aligned cadre control over the major institutions of film production in China, yet today its conclusions often serve as the basis for scholarship on film production during the Cultural Revolution, shedding its political implications in a consensus view of Cultural Revolution films as works of propaganda, not art. In this paper, I argue that conspiracy film criticism effectively positioned the Gang of Four as a cinematic auteur, executing a singular artistic vision with consistent stylistic markers and thematic messaging. Conspiracy film criticism identified a signature Gang style (bangqi) recognizable across the conspiracy film canon. Further, by prosecuting or administratively punishing the film industry professionals who were involved in producing Gang-affiliated films, conspiracy film criticism linked the stylistic and thematic markers of late Cultural Revolution films with criminality. Using the 1975 film Juelie (Breaking with Old Ideas) as a case study, I explore Juelie’s production as an industrial process, contrasting the production’s structurally diffuse distribution of agency with the centralized account of Gang control in conspiracy discourse. In addition, I explore how the presentation of Jiang Qing as Gang ring-leader gendered the Gang’s authorial voice and contributed to its presumed illegitimacy.