Families, Intellectuals, and Enemies in the “Red Classic” Remake New Tunnel Warfare
This chapter investigates how the animated film New Tunnel Warfare (Xin didao zhan, 2009), a remake of the red classic Tunnel Warfare (Didao zhan, 1965), reshapes the socio-political ideologies present in the original film for a twenty-first century child audience. The chapter particularly focuses, firstly, on how New Tunnel Warfare re-inserts the biological family into Communist discourse, in contrast to the original film where the biological family was less important than the Communist ‘family’ of people unrelated by blood. Secondly, the chapter analyses the overt representation of violence in New Tunnel Warfare and the responses of its characters to violent acts. Finally, the chapter examines the film’s revival of the intellectual as a positive figure in Communist mythology. The chapter argues that these changes have been made in New Tunnel Warfare to reflect the major socio-political changes in Chinese society between the 1960s and the early twenty-first century