Wang Baoqiang: China’s peasant-soldier celebrity

Abstract

In this article, I examine how Wang Baoqiang's early acting roles connect to the iconic class figures of peasant and soldier that were made popular in Maoist-era propaganda, and track how his portrayal of these class figures helped establish him as a film star and a modern-day celebrity in a contemporary Chinese context. Similar to Richard Dyer’s assertion that ‘star images have histories, and histories that outlive the star’s own lifetime’, these Maoist figures also have a long cultural life that have transcended political changes and have outlasted single lifetimes, and their importance still reverberate today. I argue that by representing these class figures, Wang has leveraged these roles to become a modern-day celebrity. To do this, I begin by briefly introducing Wang and explaining the social and ideological contexts of the peasant and soldier Maoist figures – the peasant ‘everyman’ and the People’s Liberation Army soldier ‘hero’ – and then explore these figures and their iconic characteristics. First, I examine Wang’s roles as peasants and rural migrants, who are naïve, honest and hardworking characters whose endurance and earnestness inspire other migrants to succeed. Then, I examine two of his soldier roles, and how they invoke the altruistic and sacrificial Maoist tropes attached to this group, as well as allude to the iconic persona of Lei Feng, a selfless Maoist soldier hero who was not only ideologically important during the Maoist era but whose image has been ‘resurrected’ in the contemporary period by the state to promote patriotism. I conclude by considering the use of iconic Maoist character tropes in Chinese celebrity studies and consider how these socio-historical and aesthetic icons intersect with modern-day celebrity.

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ORCID for Corey Kai Nelson Schultz: orcid.org/0000-0001-7866-2264

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