Originally published at: http://sg.lsepcn.com/archives/454
Criticism of Xu Song and His Reactionary Songs
Editorial Board of League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
Preface
Art, as a form of social consciousness that reflects real life through typical images, derives its content and form from real life. In a class society, different classes have different lives, and naturally, different arts—bourgeois art vigorously promotes decadent and rotten exploitative class lifestyles, spreading reactionary ideas of the bourgeoisie, serving to maintain capitalist social order; proletarian art advocates healthy and positive lifestyles of the working people, spreading Marxist revolutionary ideas, serving to establish and consolidate the proletarian dictatorship. Clearly, art in a class society inevitably bears class characteristics, with art of different classes serving their own interests, leading to fierce ideological struggle within the artistic realm. After the counterrevolutionary group of the Chinese revisionists seized central power through conspiracy, they aimed to restore capitalism across the country, implementing a series of fascist political and legal systems to undermine the socialist economic foundation, and fully spread bourgeois ideas in the ideological sphere to maintain capitalist rule. During the period of socialist arts, especially during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, excellent artistic forms such as quotations songs, revolutionary model operas, red dramas, and red films were slandered and suppressed, replaced by various reactionary bourgeois arts promoting monarchy, talent and beauty, and depicting the exploitative lives of the ruling class, with themes of male-female love, drunken orgies, and luxury.
\nIn the 21st century, when science and technology have greatly advanced, bourgeois art uses the internet—an emerging communication channel—to spread reactionary bourgeois ideas at an astonishing speed. The bourgeois “traffic star” Xu Song, who entered the public eye as an online singer, rose by riding this countercurrent.
1. The Rise of Xu Song
After the ideological front was occupied by the bourgeoisie, those bourgeois “artists” who dared not act rashly under proletarian dictatorship suddenly appeared to cause trouble. They shouted slogans like “opposing art stereotyping” and “opposing ideological art,” completely denying proletarian realism that reflects social reality, praises laborers, and promotes revolutionary spirit. However, their “depoliticized” art, produced under the banner of “depoliticization,” is nothing but decadent art filled with bourgeois political stench. For a time, society was flooded with vulgar, frivolous bourgeois yellow songs. During this period of rampant weeds, Xu Song, aided by his family’s bourgeois elite education, plagiarized works of other reactionary bourgeois singers—such as Jay Chou’s “Nocturne,” and copied a so-called “famous song” “Funeral of the Rose,” appearing with the stage name “Vae.” Subsequently, Xu Song gained fame in the arts circle with his style of pretentious, contrived songs that cater to petty-bourgeois individualism and self-righteousness, and in 2007, he joined the Anhui Musicians Association. Some commercial companies began inviting him to create promotional songs for their brands.
In 2011, Xu Song signed with “Haitang Music,” finally realizing his dream of turning music into money. During this period, his songs covered a wide range of themes: romantic love between bourgeois youth, sublime natural scenery, and “exposing” and “satirizing” social chaos. All these themes appealed to the petty bourgeoisie’s pursuit of love, their fantasies of finding “paradise” before the inevitable demise of their class, and expressed their dissatisfaction with capitalism while daring only to grumble and complain. As a result, Xu Song released multiple albums, became famous on major platforms, and frequently ranked in the top ten on music charts, earning him the nickname “QQ Music’s Three Giants” among fans.
In 2016, Xu Song was promoted to director of Haitang Music, and his years of painstaking effort finally paid off. After Haitang Music merged into Taihe Music, Xu Song often appeared as a guest on CCTV’s programs. After adapting Yue Fei’s “Little Heavy Mountain: Last Night’s Cold Cicadas Never Ceased Singing” into a popular song and performing it on the reactionary program “Classic Recitation” promoting nationalism, Xu Song was further favored by the authorities. Thus, he managed to please both petty-bourgeois and bourgeois circles: online fans praised him as a “talent,” while official media—People’s Literature and Art—also praised him as “not vulgar nor pretentious.” In reality, behind the guise of “highbrow and popular” songs, Xu Song caters to petty-bourgeois tastes and also seeks favor from the revisionist authorities, showing a profit-oriented, hypocritical face.
2. The Greedy “Talented” Person
Xu Song has been repeatedly nominated for major bourgeois music awards such as the “Eastern Billboard” and “Global Chinese Chart,” winning numerous “Golden Melody Awards.” Yet, during award ceremonies, he modestly said: “Being a singer or artist, frankly, is just fleeting fame, just a little mood at the time.” Such a “detached from fame and fortune” attitude! In his song “Crows,” Xu Song boasts of “carrying surging passion” that makes him “unlikable,” portraying himself as an “independent, high-minded gentleman who refuses to conform.” Is Xu Song truly the “original, unpretentious, fame-averse” “talent” he claims to be, yet also reaps wealth and fame? The truth is, none of this is more than his ridiculous self-deception.
Chairman Mao said: “There is no super-utilitarianism in the world; in a class society, it is either the utilitarianism of this class or that class.”[1] Bourgeois “musicians” are a parasitic class within the bourgeoisie, economically benefiting from signing contracts with music companies, touring, and releasing songs; politically, their works promote reactionary bourgeois ideas, which conform to the petty-bourgeois self-degradation and the needs of the revisionist bureaucratic monopoly group to maintain their rule. Moreover, the parasitic and decadent nature of “musicians” in the economy complements their reactionary political stance. Spreading reactionary works widely, gaining official and popular praise, and expanding their audience are prerequisites for their parasitic income; at the same time, their profit-making inevitably produces a large amount of spiritual poison that poisons society and harms the country.
As one of China’s most famous “musicians,” Xu Song lives a luxurious parasitic life. He now resides in Beijing’s Xinghewan community, owns a duplex apartment worth 25 million yuan, wears a 4-million-yuan high-end watch, and has boasted that his annual income “conservatively” exceeds 25 million yuan (the actual amount is undoubtedly much higher).
Like any other bourgeois, Xu Song is not satisfied with his current lavish lifestyle. He seeks to expand his influence for greater benefits. On December 31, 2022, at the Hunan TV New Year’s Eve Gala, under the guise of “gifts for fans,” he deliberately compiled a “medley” of sixteen of his most popular songs, set to current trending short-video music styles, creating a reactionary song mashup—“Unexpected.” At this moment, Xu Song’s intention to promote reactionary works was clear, and his “detached from fame and fortune” image was completely shattered.
3. The Morally Corrupt Yellow Singer
Xu Song, the “talent” in the eyes of fans, is actually a vulgar, obscene yellow singer who promotes depravity and theft. His lecherous nature is exposed in his reactionary song “Wave,” whose lyrics reveal his true nature. The beast, upon seeing women, immediately tears off the mask of “high moral character,” and openly declares: “Haven’t touched a drop of alcohol for years, tonight I’ll drink with you till we’re done. You say life is a fleeting autumn for plants and trees, don’t impose so many restrictions.” Moreover, Xu Song uses his vulgar brush to depict a “lewd couple having sex on a boat”: “In the middle of the sea, our boat begins to sway… The waves, crashing against the deck, remind me to be surging.”
If “Wave” depicts a shameless couple indulging in public sex, then the scene fabricated in “Late Night Bookstore” is even more disgusting.
In the story, the protagonist is a perverted man who, upon encountering a woman in a bookstore late at night, tries to flirt with her and then follows her. When he finally loses her, the stalker shamelessly says, “Thank you, life needs beauty.” Xu Song’s arrangement of this plot serves what purpose? In fact, the protagonist in the story is merely Xu Song’s artistic avatar, and his embellishment of beastly behavior is just a defense of his own vulgar face. Through the stalker’s mouth, Xu Song shamelessly attributes his own beastly acts to “pursuit of beauty” and “art,” which is reminiscent of bourgeoisie’s ancient Greek and Roman customs of collecting nude statues and hanging nude paintings in bathrooms. It must be said that Xu Song is a “cultured hooligan,” and “Late Night Bookstore” has become his self-justification: “Pursuing beauty cannot be considered lust… Pursuing beauty! …A scholar’s affair, can it be called lust?” Peeling away Xu Song’s hypocritical rhetoric, a blatant, shameless beast of lust appears before us.
In “Late Night Bookstore,” Xu Song covers up the fact of his failed crime and helps “him” escape from the charges, opening the door for society’s scum who conspire against women. Even more infuriating, Xu Song fabricates a monologue of a female character’s inner thoughts: “Do you read books or look at me? Your eyes are full of curiosity, igniting a spark in your heart, daring to say what you want.” The female being followed is portrayed as a “loose woman,” turning the fact of a pervert molesting an innocent woman into a transaction between a client and a prostitute. [2]
In real society, women suffer greatly due to low economic status and household burdens. They are also bound by Confucian precepts, required to follow the “Three Obediences and Four Virtues,” making it difficult to escape their tragic fate of being reproductive tools and household slaves for their husbands. The social reality of male dominance and the increasingly decadent culture of imperialist China also lead many men to ignore women’s independent personalities, harboring lewd fantasies such as molestation and rape, and waiting for opportunities to act. Some even commit these crimes openly, causing great physical and mental harm to victims. In China, countless cases of sexual harassment and sexual crimes have been exposed, and many victims, influenced by Confucian slave mentality and male supremacy, choose to remain silent, leaving many cases still hidden. Xu Song deliberately ignores the suffering of innocent women, using euphemisms to distort their victimization as “normal interactions,” openly defending the perpetrators—shameless and reactionary!
Such crazy pornographic ideas are reflected in Xu Song’s personal practice. He once openly said: “I always hope to have a beautiful woman who can quietly discuss poetry and literature with me, turn around, and go eat, party, and be wild with me.” With such a vile and vulgar idea, Xu Song has “pursued” almost every female singer he collaborated with, mostly developing romantic relationships. He once flirted with Jin Sha, creating two extremely vulgar yellow songs “Your Mouth” and “Infatuation,” and later sang with Huang Ling, openly flirting on Weibo and dating privately. In 2022, he quickly confirmed a “romantic relationship” with Feng Xi, who is 14 years younger and had no prior contact. Thus, the mask of Xu Song’s “high moral character” and “detached from the world,” his “pursuit of pure art,” was completely torn apart.
4. The Sensational Reactionary Writer
Many petty-bourgeois listeners online admire Xu Song’s pretentious and contrived style, believing his works are “meaningful,” expressing his indignation and critique of social chaos. They say songs like “Illusion Fat” call on women to stop damaging their health for the sake of thinness; “Strange Talk” satirizes “experts” who are all talk and no action… These petty-bourgeois listeners shamelessly elevate Xu Song and his reactionary songs because they fit their low-level tastes, portraying him as a “righteous hero willing to speak out.”
But from a Marxist perspective, “To test whether a writer’s subjective wishes and motives are correct and kind, one should look not at his declarations but at the effects of his works on society and the masses. Social practice and its effects are the standard for testing subjective wishes or motives.”[3]
So, how do the broad petty-bourgeois audience interpret Xu Song’s works? What kind of ideas have his songs spread in society? As shown in the previous examples, the so-called “profound” and “meaningful” works of Xu Song are just repackaged trash, with rotten old ideas hidden behind flowery language.
The so-called “deep meaning” in Xu Song’s works is achieved through simple metaphors, metonymy, and association, with no real brilliance. As mentioned earlier, the song “Wave” links the rising and falling of waves with sexual intercourse, promoting hedonism and indulgence; “Late Night Bookstore” uses “desire for knowledge” as a metaphor for sexual desire, spreading the idea that molestation and rape are justified, and viewing women as sexual tools—an objectification of women.
The other so-called “admonition of social ills,” the song “Illusion Fat,” is also a low-level, reactionary work. Its main content mocks women obsessed with losing weight: “Oh, oh, the excess flesh still looks a bit much. Oh, oh, when will I become free and easy?” “Better to take a walk when free, rather than post selfies on Moments. Some girls love posting selfies. Their waists are slim, and their faces sharp… They are super concerned about weight gain and loss, spending a lot of money on gyms.” It’s clear Xu Song does not have “kind concern” for these women, but rather contempt and disdain. Moreover, the lyrics are hollow, just a collection of phenomena, with no real critique or exposure of social chaos. Only narrow-minded petty-bourgeois listeners like Xu Song’s fans can praise such tasteless stuff as editorials. Xu Song also exposes his hypocritical face here: on the one hand, he “advises” women not to care too much about their figures, but on the other hand, he says “a round face is quite cute,” which is just another way of objectifying and judging women’s appearance and figure. The most disgusting part is that Xu Song uses his usual vulgar skill—there is a lyric in “Illusion Fat”: “Compared to reality and novels, the lightness of Feiyan is good, but it seems you also can’t help caring whether it’s good to touch.” It turns out Xu Song criticizes women’s over-pursuit of slimness because he himself prefers “plump” “feel.” Such a beast, disguising himself as caring for women’s health, is truly nauseating! It’s obvious that Xu Song’s “Illusion Fat” seems to criticize women’s “beauty service,” but actually blames women for the consequences of a male-dominated society and objectification, and whitewashes himself—a “bottom man” who is full of lust and judges women solely by their appearance and figure[4][5].
Xu Song, this thief, especially likes to hype current political news, pretending to “criticize” and “expose” the dark side of Chinese society, but in fact, he glorifies fascist Chinese social systems and denounces the workers’ struggles. His “small slander, big help” tactics are favored by his masters, which is why he receives effusive praise from official media. The song “Illegal Animal” is a typical example of his manipulative “small slander, big help” method.
In 1978, the revisionist “State Council” held the third national urban work conference, proposing to implement urban construction management and supervision systems. In 1996, the Eighth National People’s Congress passed the “Administrative Penalty Law,” inventing a “special” law that bypasses courts, procuratorates, and the appeal process—allowing administrative agencies to interpret and enforce laws independently. From then on, the revisionist clique could act arbitrarily, oppressing and plundering the working people. They recruited thugs from among hooligans, organized so-called “urban construction supervision teams,” and, under the guise of “rectifying city appearance” and “standardizing urban construction,” harassed and fined ordinary people like street vendors and small farmers, even resorting to violence. But “where there is oppression, there is resistance,” and small city vendors often fought back fiercely, sometimes escalating into violent conflicts. To intensify repression, the “urban construction supervision teams” upgraded into today’s “Urban Management Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Inspection Bureau,” implementing even more brutal exploitation and dictatorship.
As conflicts between the revisionist “urban management” forces and city vendors intensified, on July 17, 2013, the “Linyou Melon Farmer Incident” broke out in Linyou County, Hunan. The urban management officers repeatedly expelled melon farmer Deng Zhengjia from his land, and finally, in a violent clash, used a scale weight to brutally strike Deng’s head, killing him instantly. The incident sparked outrage among the local people, who surrounded the authorities’ officials, condemning and protesting against the revisionist government. The local government, upon learning of this, gathered over two hundred police officers to seize Deng’s body, repeatedly beat shields to intimidate the crowd, and shouted: “Get out of the way or die.” The crowd spontaneously took sticks and wooden stools, guarding the body overnight and confronting the police. Over two hundred police officers armed with electric batons, telescopic batons, shields, and other weapons attacked the protesters. The crowd initially repelled the police with stones, bottled water, and watermelons, but ultimately was overwhelmed due to inferior numbers and equipment, and Deng’s body was taken away. During the clashes, police brutality caused several deaths and dozens of injuries among the civilians.
The incident immediately drew Xu Song’s intense attention. Recognizing an opportunity to “ride the heat” and increase his work’s traffic and profits, he quickly engaged in “artistic creation.” One month later, his new “famous song,” “Illegal Animal,” was released. The song begins by sarcastically describing the “relevant authorities” giving “guidance opinions” after petitions, seemingly mocking bureaucratic irresponsibility and suppression of public opinion; then it sings: “The girl selling sweet potatoes sets up a stall in front of the school, which is not without money, nor without a smiling face,” depicting the plight of small urban vendors forced to bow to the revisionist officials. Xu Song then sharply warns: “When dark clouds gather, heavy rain will come as scheduled,” implying that social injustice and people’s grievances will inevitably lead to large-scale mass movements. However, at the end of the song, he suddenly shifts tone: “Buy a sweet potato, or it will be too cold tonight,” and “Silent tears, forming a lake in this land.” Instantly, the background of social injustice and suffering, the momentum of government repression and popular rebellion, turns into a melancholic and desolate atmosphere. It becomes clear that Xu Song’s long prelude aims to emphasize the inevitable failure of mass movements and the impossibility of changing an unjust society. This technique of first uplifting and then depressing, promoting surrender, is eerily similar to the “Loyal and Righteous Water Margin” by Shi Nai’an.
In addition, Xu Song also particularly likes to invert right and wrong, black and white, and promote the theory of class reconciliation, which is vividly demonstrated in the MV of “Illegal Animal”. Xu Song fictionalizes such a plot in the MV: a melon farmer who relies on street vending to make a living is always violently driven away by urban management officers, often having his vehicle seized, watermelons smashed, and beaten, while he returns home to comfort his child by saying: “Dad rode across the zebra crossing today, and a violation zebra dashed out, and all our watermelons were broken.” This father also takes on the role of the urban management officers, telling stories of their “good deeds” and depicting a scene of neighborly harmony to deceive the child. At the end of the MV, after discovering the truth, the child cries alone while repeatedly repairing the broken weight of his father, and writes in his diary: “Love those who work hard, cherish fruits and vegetables, be more patient, help zebras cross the road, and teach them to look at the traffic lights.” In fact, Xu Song is merely using the mouths of “father” and “child” to attribute the brutality of China’s urban management to the low quality of grassroots civil servants, their ignorance of rules, and “violent law enforcement”, as if the original intention of establishing the “Administrative Penalty Law” was to safeguard the people’s interests, but only the enforcers are problematic, which is an unprecedented barbaric distortion of facts! Isn’t this the surrenderist stance of Shao Nian An, who “does not oppose the emperor but only the corrupt officials”? Isn’t this the popular saying in Chinese society: “The original intention of the higher-ups is good, but the lower levels implement it poorly”?
The state is an unresolvable product of class contradictions, serving as a tool for the ruling class to oppress the oppressed. The military, police, prisons, and other violent organs are the main components of the state, and the bourgeoisie relies on these organs to maintain its rule and suppress proletarian resistance. Laws are regulations and statutes enacted by the state to represent the will and interests of the ruling class. Laws serve the state power and the interests of the ruling class, and must be enforced by the state power. In China's bourgeois dictatorship, laws are designed to protect bourgeois interests, especially to safeguard the rights of the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie in power, protecting their right to own the means of production and exploit the surplus value created by wage labor, and to force small producers into bankruptcy through competition to monopolize the market, but do not protect the rights of the broad masses of workers and peasants to survive. The "Administrative Penalty Law" is a law used by China's bourgeoisie to crack down on urban proletarians and petty bourgeoisie, so it cannot be regarded as a pursuit of fairness and justice for the working people. To truly enable the working people to take control of their destiny, only through violent revolution can the bourgeois state's machinery be thoroughly shattered, replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the transformation of the relations of production achieved through the establishment of socialist superstructure.
In a class society, different classes have different worldviews. As a beneficiary of China's capitalist system, Xu Song naturally cannot propose any change to the capitalist system. His class position determines that he must embellish capitalism and sing praises to the bourgeoisie. Xu Song, as a popular bourgeois "musician", lives in a luxury house in Beijing, frequents high-end venues, and often vacations in Sanya villas, living a lavish, decadent life. He has long been intoxicated with the parasitic state of surplus value consumption, enjoying a life detached from the working masses, and he is utterly unwilling to approach the lives of ordinary workers. As for the so-called "leftist" claims online about opposing capitalism and supporting revolution, they are even more laughable nonsense.
On the surface, Xu Song pretends to criticize social chaos; in reality, he has long been secretly promoting the natural rationality of the capitalist system, declaring that capitalism is unchangeable and eternal. This loyal defender of capitalism in the song "Break Free" roars: even if one recognizes the injustice and chaos in society, it cannot be changed because everyone is "unable to escape endocrine" and "unable to escape being like floating duckweed". He uses idealist fatalism to deny human subjective initiative, denying that humans can transform the world through understanding. He claims that "all powerlessness is because one cannot escape oneself", as if some innate nature is binding humans and demanding that they live according to the order of capitalist society. Xu Song describes human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as determined by "endocrine" and as an unchangeable natural law. In fact, this kind of rhetoric is not new; it is a rehash of "social Darwinism" that appeared about two hundred years ago. This rhetoric confuses the boundary between biological movement and social movement, believing that the main driving force of social development is not internal class contradictions and class struggle, but external factors such as climate and geography. Based on this, everyone is controlled by biological instincts and cannot escape, following the rules of "survival of the fittest" within society. Xu Song is precisely defending the bourgeoisie’s exploitation of workers' sweat and maintaining parasitic economic status.
Xu Song’s set of fallacies is nothing more than trying to make people believe that the laws of capitalist society are a kind of natural law, and that natural laws are unchangeable by human effort, so capitalism will last forever. Xu Song also admits: "I will not stir any emotion for people unrelated to me." Clearly, Xu Song is an extreme individualist and egoist reactionary. His so-called "cynicism" and "standing up for justice" are merely hypocritical disguises.
General Conclusion
Objectively, Xu Song’s songs do not play any role in exposing social darkness or spreading a healthy worldview, but instead are full of decadent sounds promoting bourgeois decay. Subjectively, Xu Song himself is just a petty clown obsessed with profit, vulgar and low, seeking to attract attention, and not a righteous hero criticizing the times or speaking out for justice. In short, Xu Song is a mirror reflecting the ugliness of these glamorous, famous parasites among China’s bourgeois "artists". The analysis of Xu Song and his reactionary songs teaches us — never forget the class struggle. All our old ideas and hobbies are rotten weeds in this decaying capitalist society, unworthy of humanity. We must thoroughly break with these old concepts and ideas, become a new-style communist fighter, criticize bourgeois ideology, and promote proletarian morality.
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毛泽东：《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》，《毛泽东选集》一卷本，人民出版社，1967年。 ↑
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许嵩后来还与“虚拟歌姬”洛天依合唱该曲，由洛天依扮演被尾随女角色，将这首黄色歌曲演绎得活灵活现。可见，如洛天依之流的“虚拟歌姬”也是专门传播资产阶级下流反动思想的工具。 ↑
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毛泽东：《在延安文艺座谈会上的讲话》，《毛泽东选集》一卷本，人民出版社，1967年。 ↑
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中国一部分“女权主义者”将女性好装饰打扮的行为称作——“服美役”。实际上，这种行为是女性社会地位低下而从属于男性的证明。女性对男性的依附性越强，她们受到资产阶级审美观和恋爱观的影响越深，便越要追求装饰打扮。因为，把自己打扮得像花瓶，是男性对于他们的私有财产——作为家庭奴隶和性工具的女性的要求。 ↑
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指不把女性当作独立的人看待，只把她们当作性工具，并且对各种女性充满性侵幻想的男性。 ↑