Beautifying Life And The Transformation Of Daily Life In The Early 1980s

"Back to the 1980s" has become a cultural and thought trend in recent years,which simultaneously gives rise to legions of intellectual enquiries themed around reflections on the 1980s.Departing from the previous academic work that focused on literary or artistic texts,this dissertation looks at the daily life aspect.Based on content analysis of Culture&Life,a vivid portrayal of the urban life in the early 1980s,this dissertation,in a zooming-in style, taps into the complex configurations within the early 1980s.It takes a closer look at how everyday life in the 1980s was imagined and contructed,how everyday life changed as well as how the imagination related to the socialist revolution during the past 3 decades.Firstly, the insurmounatble contradition between sociast revolution and everyday life,especially the fact that radical cultural politics failed to respond to people’s expectations of everyday life,proved fertile ground for the rebirth of life magazines like Culture&Life.That is, expectation for "beautifying daylife"in the late 1970s and early 1980s.While Culture&Life was the site where everyday life was reimagined, it was also where competing voices,ideologies contended with each other.With its intellectual-based editorial team who were seriously wronged during the Cultural Revolution,by "beautifying life" around all aspects like attire,housing and consumer goods,etc,Culture&Life portrayed a vivid picture of post-revolutionary daily life that departed from a heavily politicized one. On the other hand,the remaining socialist envision that prioritized cross-class and egalitarian sharing still endured as invisible political unconsciousness among many.The contradiction manifested itself through its vigilance towards"bourgeois way of life"and reached its peak during the "Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign".All these represents an intertwined picture of the transitional early 1980s period.As the complex dimensions of the early Reform period continued to be hollowed out,together with a de-facto waning socialist envision as well as the increasing disparity between all social strata,the social and cultural context that shaped a pan-class acceptance of Culture&Life ceased to exist, which led to its inevitable demise.