Sunrise: Do people have an innate aesthetic sense?
Hongzheng: Innate is okay, right? Empiricism, right?
Sunrise: Then why in socialist revolutionary films are the revolutionary actors all handsome with proper features, while the counter-revolutionaries are all ugly and hideous?
Hongzheng: I think there is some basis for this. Counter-revolutionaries are extremely parasitic and corrupt, which makes their daily lives unmanageable, leading to disheveled clothes and ferocious faces—can be said to be a deep-seated class hatred. Also, I feel this issue doesn’t seem to have much research significance…
Chuyang: It’s to highlight the image, artistic processing.
Hongzheng: That’s also part of it.
Beifeng: Using appearance to reflect class, definitely need some uglification for reactionaries.
Otherwise, it would become like Liangjian and Xuebao.
Sunrise: But isn’t the beautification and uglification of appearance reflecting people’s aesthetic views?
Luosiding: I don’t understand what this has to do with innate aesthetic sense.
Since it’s just about aesthetic views, why emphasize “innate”?
Sunrise: It indeed has nothing to do with it. Then what influences people’s aesthetic sense?
Luosiding: I think it’s social practice and class background.
Zhaozeshi Bing: Are you talking about class when you mention handsome and ugly?
In aesthetics, Lenin said, all development and construction of socialism are beautiful.
If we abstractly say handsome and ugly, do male stars count as “handsome”?
In socialist revolutionary films, handsome characters need styling and artistic design. But it’s not just putting on powder.
Sunrise: Then what is the aesthetic of the proletariat?
Luanma: There is no super-class aesthetic.
Your aesthetic also doesn’t speak of class.
The fundamental standard for the aesthetic views of the exploiting and exploited classes is labor.
The aesthetic of the exploiting class generally is based on being detached from labor, while the aesthetic of the exploited class is generally based on integrating labor.
Chuyang: The proletariat should praise the working masses who toil with calloused hands, despise the parasitic and exploitative bourgeoisie, and appearance should also be political. The main aspects are simplicity and neatness, which are fine qualities of the proletariat, not dressing up flamboyantly like the bourgeoisie.
Luanma: Aesthetic is part of the superstructure ideology, determined by the economic base. A person’s aesthetic is formed in social practice, so the aesthetic of the exploiting class reflects their characteristics as exploiters. To be part of the exploiting class, one must first be economically detached from labor, not relying on oneself for daily survival. Only by being detached from labor can other standards be discussed. Whether or not one is detached from labor is the criterion for class division in aesthetic views.
Moreover, there is no mechanical standard here; specific situations need specific analysis. The same trait can represent different class aesthetics in different contexts.
Although in reality, aesthetic views are fundamentally class-based, they are also influenced by ethnicity, gender, region, age, living and non-living things, humans and non-humans, etc.
For example, take skin color.
In modern China, fair skin is considered “beautiful” by the so-called “mainstream aesthetic” because the bourgeoisie can afford to detach from labor, spending a lot of money and time to make themselves look fair and tender, while the proletariat cannot maintain this skin color constantly. Farmers work under the blazing sun daily, so they get tanned. This distinguishes the bourgeoisie from the working farmers. Construction workers are the same.
But it’s not that simple. Many workers now work in dark factories and shopping malls, rarely exposed to sunlight, and may even be relatively fair-skinned due to lack of sunlight. So, skin color alone isn’t enough to distinguish class; skin delicacy also matters. Even if workers don’t tan, long-term labor roughens their skin, differentiating them from the bourgeoisie who spend high prices on smooth, tender skin.
Also, in places like milk tea shops or restaurants, if someone gets burned or has an accident, their skin can be damaged and scarred, which again distinguishes them from the bourgeoisie.
Beifeng: So, whether someone has tattoos or not can distinguish the working people from the idle?
Erxinji: Not necessarily, I think.
Luanma: But this can be further explored. The Chinese were originally yellow-skinned people, and the Chinese bourgeoisie is naturally also yellow-skinned. Why do they still highly value white skin? Besides the fact that white skin can symbolize detachment from labor, it’s also because since modern times, the Chinese bourgeoisie has had deep ties with imperialism, influenced heavily by Western imperialism. After the restoration, they imported foreign capital to restore capitalism, especially Western bourgeois cultural works, which feature white-skinned bourgeois white actors. So, capitalist restoration created a culture of Western imperialist worship, and aesthetic views became about admiring the West, copying Western bourgeoisie.
On the other hand, in the West, things are different. Since Europeans and Americans are all white, their bourgeoisie tends to see black as beautiful, calling “wheat-colored” or “black” skin “beautiful,” to distinguish themselves from the white-skinned lower classes.
Erxinji: Yes.
European stars love to sunbathe at the beach.
Beifeng: If they can’t go to the beach, they can get sunlight in tanning salons and turn darker.
Sunrise: What about facial shape? For example, I always feel that the faces of Qian Miao in Chunmiao, and the director Yuan in the hospital, and Dr. Fang in Chunmiao, Principal Long in the rupture, and Jiang Tao in the counterattack, all have quite obvious differences. The former has a pointed mouth, ferocious face, and rat-like eyes, giving the impression of slyness and being easily recognized as a villain.
Liuxia: Does Sunrise think this is a scientific approach to studying psychology?
Luosiding: I think, being able to tell at a glance that they are villains is because in reality, those bourgeoisie are like that—pointed faces, flattering. Artistic exaggeration is inevitable.
Sunrise: Isn’t that judging by appearance? Are pointed faces necessarily flattering?
And I don’t understand why Western bourgeoisie also discriminates against Black people.
Luosiding: How does this relate to judging by appearance? These are two parallel adjectives, I don’t see a causal relationship. I mean, the bourgeoisie has these traits, not that people with these traits are bourgeoisie.
Liuxia: I think it’s the ideological outlook that distinguishes heroes from villains. Positive characters, having undergone ideological struggles and revolutionary training, give an impression of being spirited and upward. Conversely, villains are always scheming, doing selfish harm, and their faces naturally look gloomy.
Liuxia: In real life, there are not only slim and cunning bourgeoisie but also fat and greedy bourgeoisie.
My previous department head was a fat and greedy capitalist.
Sunrise: So, the bourgeoisie flattering others includes both pointed faces and non-pointed faces. Why do people mainly associate pointed faces with flattery?
Erxinji: Being overweight is just not working, that’s the image.
Because of a dark heart, double-faced.
Luosiding: These two words are parallel.
I don’t understand where Sunrise sees a modifier or other relationship.
I didn’t say pointed faces necessarily mean anything bad, or flattery necessarily means anything bad.
This nitpicking is pretty pointless.
Liuxia: This isn’t contradictory. The bourgeoisie discriminates against Black people, but not just Black people; they discriminate against Black proletarians and proletarians of other races. It’s not about racial discrimination per se, but about class content. Discriminating against Black people without considering class is a misunderstanding.
So they can still admire blackness to separate themselves from the working masses.
Erxinji: I don’t quite understand what facial fat shape and thin shape represent.
Appearance is very abstract.
Sunrise: I think I’m not just nitpicking. Indeed, not all pointed faces are necessarily flattering. These words don’t necessarily have a direct connection. But when I mention pointed faces, why do you think of them? When people see such faces, why do they feel sly and flattering? Why do stereotypes form? Why do people tend to link these two?
Luosiding: Because these adjectives represent the landowners, rich, counter-revolutionaries, and bad rightists in society. These adjectives may not appear together on the same person, but as a class, the landlord bourgeoisie does things that are shameful and hidden, so what’s the problem with this association?
Erxinji: If the movies are made by socialist countries, then the bourgeoisie as the opposing class, being overthrown, cannot openly use the old army to suppress the proletariat, but their class consciousness doesn’t change. They still engage in double-dealing, deceive the masses externally, flatter internally within the party, and secretly sabotage.
Aesthetic views are part of the superstructure of socialism, which mainly consists of the productive relations, with the main aspect being the Communist Party and the people’s daily life.
Liuxia: Sunrise should reflect on his personal practice—why does he have an idea of judging by appearance? The body and facial features are innate, but ideological outlook is formed through practice. I think ideological outlook can influence one’s appearance, but judging a person as good or bad based solely on innate features is idealism.
Luosiding: Moreover, art will exaggerate these features.
Sunrise: I still don’t quite understand. Whether among landowners, counter-revolutionaries, or among the working people, there are pointed faces. Human facial structure is also innate, right? My question remains: why is a pointed face automatically associated with flattery, villainy, and a kind of innate magic, as if these features naturally connect with these traits without question?
Zhaozeshi Bing: Sunrise seems to be discussing abstract appearances and the issue of character shaping in socialist art. But actually, he’s trying to deny class distinctions, thinking that such character shaping in socialist art is unreasonable: people with this face type can also be workers, so why always portray them as villains? What should happen to these people in reality? Aren’t there heroes with “imperfect” features? Don’t bourgeoisie also have “proper” faces? — Therefore, socialist art is “unrealistic.” That’s what Sunrise is trying to say.
Luanma: Lu Xun: Wealthy people are heartless, selfish, fat and chubby, capable of anything, so they look treacherous. Loyalty and bravery are derived from Guan Yu’s “face like a heavy date.” I don’t know what kind of date “heavy date” refers to, but it’s always red. In reality, loyal and brave people tend to have simple minds, not neurotic, and their faces tend to flush easily. If they want to remain neutral and call themselves “the third kind of person,” they would constantly suffer mentally, with patches of blue and white on their face, finally showing a white nose. Black signifies ferocity, which is very common—fighting on the battlefield all year round, how could their faces not be dark? Young men who apply snow cream are definitely not willing to fight themselves.
You can look at Lu Xun’s views on aesthetic standards.
Sunrise says this is unrealistic. Then, is it realistic for the Kuomintang officers in “Glamour” to all look fair and tender, with hair gel, when fighting?
Socialist art simply typifies the images of different classes. In reality, people are not carved from the same mold, but they do have some common features. For example, most working people have calluses on their hands from long-term physical labor, or those who carry things on their shoulders inevitably develop calluses on their shoulders, etc.
If you want to pick bones, find some “exceptions,” it’s pointless.
Even if such people exist, artistic depiction would be completely different from that of the bourgeoisie.
Erxinji’s pointed face directly depicts facial features, such as a pointed mouth and gaunt cheeks, often used to describe ugly and vulgar appearances.
The idiom originates from Wu Jingzi’s “The Scholars” in the Qing Dynasty, where it says, “With a pointed mouth and rat-like eyes, you should look at yourself in the mirror! You’re neither fish nor fowl, just like a swan’s fart.” @Sunrise. “Neither fish nor fowl” means the person is a worker but their actions and habits don’t resemble a worker. It doesn’t conform to the typical image of the working class.
Indeed, the superficial neutrality finally reveals a white nose.
In art, character body shape expresses inner thoughts.
JQR: Because appearance itself is not something innate.
Historically, the exploiting classes and landlords used to say things like “wealthy appearance,” which actually results from their lifestyle, leading to various physical features and expressions.
Ultimately, human appearance is the result of biological movement, which is governed by higher-level social movements. Human features are also determined by social life, and I’ve never seen poor factory workers with greasy hair, fat and well-dressed, looking glamorous. Nor have I seen capitalists in factories with stooped backs and calloused hands.
Chinese working people also understand this principle. Previously, Nazis tried to cover class contradictions by hiring so-called stars to experience delivery work, making movies about it. But the working people could see at a glance that these people, no matter how they dressed, didn’t look like delivery workers.
JQR: The bourgeoisie attacks socialist art for caricaturing faces; the real aim is to promote a three-dimensional character theory. This means that bourgeoisie images can be noble and righteous, while proletariat images can be insidious and cunning.
This is a way to attack and slander socialist art.
Ultimately, appearance can to some extent reflect a person’s mental state, worldview, and lifestyle, so different classes naturally have different appearances.
Fenghuo Flame: Ultimately, the so-called debate about judging by appearance boils down to a simple conclusion: Sunrise doesn’t believe that class differences are the most fundamental differences in a class society, nor that social movements are higher than biological movements and govern biological movements. Therefore, the question of whether aesthetic sense is innate is irrelevant, and he claims that the proletariat’s aesthetic view is “judging by appearance.”
Sunrise himself knows that “aesthetic sense” involves perception—concepts, thoughts, and social consciousness.
Can this still be called innate?
Social consciousness cannot be innate.
Luanma: Human appearance is also determined by social practice.
Fenghuo Flame: Human appearance and dress are linked to class status and social practice.
Luanma: Farmers are not born black; they get tanned working under the blazing sun. Even if their descendants become darker, it’s the result of labor transformation.
Fenghuo Flame: Social movements shape human appearance.
There is nothing innate about it.
JQR: In movies about transforming prostitutes, like “The Sister and the Younger Sister,” the heroine Da Xiang, before being deceived into becoming a prostitute by landlords and madams, and after being transformed by the Communist Party into a new person, all have very different mental states.
Luanma: Labor creates humans. People look like this because of labor transformation. People now are completely different from apes.
Fenghuo: People of the same class, even if their parents’ faces are different, tend to have similar appearances.
They tend to converge, like the so-called internet celebrity faces.
Luanma: Because their activities and practices are different, even if their appearances are similar, their impressions are different.
But conversely, even without blood relations, if they do the same things and practice the same, they will also give similar impressions.
Sunrise: So, for example, does pointed face have anything to do with social practice? What kind of social practice leads to a “pointed face”?
Fenghuo: Don’t they all look similar?
Pointed face is not innate.
Ultimately, it’s about demeanor.
A cunning fat person is called a big belly, a cunning thin person is called pointed face.
Luanma: Sunrise is talking about people detached from practice and society—super-class people. Such abstract people don’t exist. There are no super-class pointed faces.
Fenghuo: You’re not studying why people are cunning, but why people are fat or thin. Then you’ll never get the answer you want.
Why do I have doubts about whether humans have an innate aesthetic sense? Actually, I have had this doubt for a long time. I once read a small booklet that exposed the crimes of Confucius. In this booklet, the working people fighting against Confucius and his gang of slave owners and reactionaries had regular features, clear eyebrows, and bright eyes, while Confucius and his reactionary clique looked gaunt, with withered features, giving people an immediate feeling of disgust. I started to think: why do people prefer faces with regular features, clear eyebrows, and bright eyes? Why do such aesthetic standards exist? Are these aesthetic standards innate? This led me to develop a biased idea of justifying my own bourgeois aesthetic of “white and slim.” Now I realize that such appearances are not innate at all, but formed through class and social practice over time. In proletarian art works, the villains belong to the exploiting class, relying on the labor of others, parasitizing on the working people to survive, engaging daily in immoral pleasures like playing games, watching pornography, and browsing short videos. Naturally, this makes them spiritually hollow, with a dull appearance, disheveled clothing, and a lack of vitality—just like some petty bourgeois students in my middle school who judge whether someone has engaged in sexual practices by observing their face. Some members of the exploiting class are also very fat due to overeating and drinking daily, which is called “big belly.” Others may not be fat but are sycophantic, vulgar, and constantly scheming and plotting, or secretly planning to suppress revolutionary masses, or aiming to reverse the revolution and overthrow the socialist regime. As a result, they often look cunning and lecherous, which is why people describe such characters as having “sharp mouths and monkey cheeks.” In contrast, proletarian revolutionaries often engage in sports, production, and labor practices, and are physically strong. After ideological struggles, they abandon low-level pleasures, have a rich spiritual life, and their overall demeanor gives a sense of masculinity, righteousness, and freshness. In summary, different classes engage in different practices, each with typical and representative facial features. The aesthetic standards of different classes are also formed by their corresponding class practices. I deny the role of social movements, deny that higher movements dominate lower movements, and ultimately still hold onto the gene theory, viewing people’s appearances through that lens, and using the argument that “people’s aesthetic sense is innate” to serve my own bourgeois aesthetic standards.
There is no aesthetic beyond class; a person’s appearance is also a product of practice. What determines a person’s looks is not only their physiological features but also the social relationships they are part of, and social factors play a decisive role.
The “white and slender” aesthetic of the rising sun is aimed at women, right? For men, it’s a different set of standards. Patriarchal figures tend to prefer women who are white, young, and slender because they think such women are easier to control. Isn’t that also the art style of women in anime and manga? Pedophiles target children because they see their young age and small strength as easy to control.
I remember during the socialist period, some actors played both righteous roles and villainous roles in movies. Therefore, the initial question of why revolutionaries are always handsome and counter-revolutionaries are always ugly is not valid, because the appearance of the same actor remains the same. Additionally, artistic works must emphasize certain aspects: revolutionaries should highlight their goodness, while reactionaries should emphasize their badness. Only then can a vivid character be well depicted, which is why actors need makeup. In the ballet version of “The White-Haired Girl,” Huang Shiren’s servant and the landlord’s wife look like ghosts from the underworld, with the Huang family estate resembling a hall of spirits in the underworld. The Qing officials and Western officials in “The Little Knife Society” look like zombies and vampires. These are typical examples.
Moreover, highlighting character traits in art is not at all about judging people by their appearance, because a person’s practice and thoughts do influence their looks and their various behaviors and manners, and this is something that can be understood through long-term life practice. I feel that Xu Ri’s point may also be influenced by a closed-off lifestyle and limited social interactions. This issue is most evident in wage labor, where managers, store managers, bosses, and ordinary employees (among whom there are both simple and honest types as well as those with more serious hooligan thoughts) all have different appearances and unique characteristics. Emphasizing this in appearance shaping is not about judging by looks; rather, art comes from life.