“Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao”: How Ideology Shapes Our Thinking and Prevents Us from Thinking Well
There is a scene in the wonderful Chinese film, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress that has stayed with me for years (click here and start at 4:32). In this scene, the hero — a young Chinese violinist who has been sent to a rural mountain village for “re-education” during the early days of the Cultural Revolution — is about to lose his violin unless he plays something that the village party boss finds acceptable. His friend (also being re-educated) suggests that he play a favorite Mozart sonata, and the boss demands to know the name of the song.
The right answer, which Luo cannot give, is that the song is called “Divertimento №17 in D major K334,” a piece of music named simply by a genre, a key signature, and a number in a catalog. Luo tries to explain this to the mountain boss, who keeps demanding a name that he can understand. Finally, Luo’s friend says that the name of the song is “Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao.” “Yes,” the boss nods knowingly, “Mozart is always thinking of Chairman Mao.”
The joke, of course, is that the Marxist party boss can’t make sense out of a piece of music without knowing where to place it in a very simplistic ideological narrative. His ideological narrative is so powerful and so all-encompassing that he…
