Dongju+Lee,+Soobin+Bae+-+Poster

Soobin Bae Essay:

Dongju Lee Essay: The 4 boxes on our paper represent the 4 olds of china. Chairman Mao was ainst anything from the past, and supported the systematic destruction of old ideas, old traditions, old habits, and old cutoms. In our project, old customs are represented by the pictures of people bowing to their elders. This shows filial piety, which was one of the customs that was destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. Old culture is represented by pictures related to confucianism. Confucianism has a history of being a large part of China's cultures. By showing cut-up pictures of the analects and other confucianist pictures, the propaganda shows how old customs need to be destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Old habits are represented with pictures of budda. Buddhism is another religion that became very popular in China, but was discarded in favor of the Cultural Revolution. By showing the destruction of Buddhism, this example of propaganda shows the destruction of one of the 4 olds. The old idea used in this propaganda was capitalism. According to Ma, capitalism was for selfish people who did not know how to share. CApitalism was what led to larger wealth gaps between the rich and the poor, making the poor resentful of the rich bourgeoisie. The bourgeosie were said to have worn top hats, and by cutting up these pictures we show that the CR eliminated 'old ideas'. What the entire poster symbolizes is the systematic destruction of the 4 olds, and their replacement with Chairman Mao's ideals.One similar method of propaganda used in the past was to make an effigy that symbolized the 4 olds, and then to burn it. Much like a voodoo doll, a humanoid figure was labled with 'the 4 olds' and thnn people destroyed it as they wanted. Instead of using 1 figure to symbolize the 4 olds, Soobin and I used 4 different boxes of pictures to symbolize each 'old'. However, both examples of propaganda use the actual destruction of an object as a metaphor for the destruction of other things.