Social Realism—China
The term "social realism" is used in a Chinese context to describe the trend prevalent in Chinese literature and cinema of the first half of the twentieth century and refers to a realistic, socially reflective, and politically engaged literary and cinematic approach. Realism was introduced into China from the West at the turn of the twentieth century. Since then various terms, including humanitarian realism, critical realism, and social realism, have been used to characterize realism in early twentieth-century Chinese literature. Literary critics, writers, and leading intellectuals have offered various interpretations of this vague concept. Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), one of the most influential Chinese intellectuals of the period, embraced social realism by calling for a "popular social literature" and a "fresh and sincere literature of realism." The most prominent literary association in the 1920s and 1930s, the Wenxue Yenjiu Hui ("Literary Research Association"), whose literary magazine attracted major fiction writers, proclaimed a realism labeled as "art-for-life's sake." Leftist literary writers and theoreticians such as Zhou Yang (1908–1989) demanded that literature reflect the reality of social life and exercise active critique of social problems.
The embrace of realism by Chinese writers in this period was chiefly motivated by their political and cultural needs: modernizing China and rebuilding Chinese society and culture. This motive is clearly reflected in the literary realism adopted by major writers of the period, including Lu Xun (1881–1936), Mao Dun (1896–1981), Lao She (1899–1966), and Ba Jin (b. 1904). Their works portrayed a critical picture of a sick nation, a hypocritical and stale culture, social injustice and suffering, and the deprivation of human dignity and freedom.
Although strongly influenced by the Western mode of critical realism, the fictional form of Chinese social realism has its own distinct makeup and varieties. Major writers such as Mao Dun, Lao She, and Shen Congwen (1902–1988), for instance, realistically depicted their social concern through, respectively, historical, melodramatic, and lyrical narrative modes and forms of representation. Some writers, however, sacrificed literary forms and artistic integrity by being overly concerned with political content.
Social realism also refers specifically to Chinese leftist and progressive filmmakers during the Chinese civil war (1945–1949), whose "social realist" films documented the social misery of that period. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, social realism was replaced by the officially sanctioned socialist realism, which became the dominant theory in literature and arts in Mainland China during the second half of the twentieth century.
Ba Jin; Lao She; Lu Xun; Shen Congwen
Further Reading
Anderson, Marston. (1990) The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Wang, Te-wei. (1992) Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen. New York: Columbia University Press.
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