Red Guards — high school and university students — wave copies of Chairman Mao Zedong's Little Red Book during a parade in June 1966 in Beijing's streets at the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution. More than 1 million people are believed to have died during the decade-long upheaval. (Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images)
While listening to the radio yesterday, I heard a report on China coming to terms with a bloody period in its history called the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which was initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong and enforced by his Red Guards.
One image from the report struck me as particularly cogent to our discussion of the inverted hierarchies in Sachs' Carnival plays: students attacking teachers. What sets this image of inversion apart from the content of the Carnival plays? Why does this action come across as particularly violent and revolutionary when much of the action in Sachs' texts seems so light-hearted and humorous? How does a comedy have to present an inverted hierarchy for it to "work" within the text?
