Themes of 'The Red Lantern' and 'Growing Up with Posters'

Reading Response
Name
Institution
Reading Response
The revolutionary operas such as the “The Red Lantern” became a government propaganda and also popular entertainment at a time when Cultural Revolution was occurring. This is because government institutions in place used these entertainment tools to pass their messages across to people. It was a platform that governments could employ to push for certain agenda and systems that they wanted the people to adopt. For example, “The Red Lantern showed how a railway worker, with his mother and daughter, braved death to send secret codes to the guerrilla units resisting the Japanese invaders” (Yang, 1969, p. 169) to pass a message of patriotism explaining the disapproval of the Japanese intruders in the country. All the same, these revolutionary operas were also a form of entertainment because they became very popular with both young and old. They employed new techniques of displaying drama and so they gained a lot of following for their enhanced content similar to the Western drama.
“These stories also point up the posters’ power in generating a multiplicity of meanings and subject positions, especially whe...