The Changing Face of Mao: From Texing Actor to Star Casting in Chinese Main Melody Films

Serving as political propaganda through entertainment, China’s “main melody” films came into existence under specific historical circumstances in the late 1980s and have kept evolving with the changing Chinese film industry. The increasing prevalence of film stars taking on historical roles in these films represents one of the most conspicuous changes in the practice. Instead of regarding the stars only as serving a commercial function to increase audience sizes, this article adopts a socio-semiotic approach to explore the impact of having film stars in the main melody film texts. Through analyzing three generations of Mao actors and their performances, I argue that the casting of stars helps to de-textualize the revolutionary messages and transform their ideological symbolism into social discourse. The film stars help main melody films become an integral part of contemporary Chinese political culture, characterized by a similar separation of form and content.