Fantastic Laughter in a Socialist-Realist Tradition?

With an aim to shed some light on the regulated yet not necessarily homogenized laughter of the pre-Cultural Revolution Maoist years, this chapter examines the nuanced deployment of laughter in the popular children’s novella The Magic Gourd (Bao hulu de mimi) by the literary humorist Zhang Tianyi (1906–1985) and its eponymous film adaptation by Yang Xiaozhong (1899–1969). Contextualizing these texts both in the larger tradition of modern Chinese literature and culture and in the specific socio-cultural milieu of the late 1950s and the early 1960s, I look into how, without apparently challenging the dominant socialist-realist model, they tactfully relieve the stress between the politically repudiated comic mode of “satire” (fengci) and the purposefully promoted mode of “extolment” (gesong). Whether intended or not, the keen relevance the texts bear to the political and economic hyperboles of the Maoist era adds further ambiguities and ironies to the already layered laughter.