Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-240) and index.

The sonic imaginary -- Selling revolution -- Productivist display -- Illuminating the commodity fetish -- Remediating the hero -- The model in the mirror.

"The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76) is typically cast as a time of ubiquitous politics and scarce goods. Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed. In Newborn Socialist Things Laurence Coderre argues that the Cultural Revolution media environment and the ways in which its constituent elements engaged with contemporaneous discourses of materiality and political economy anticipated the widespread commodification now so closely associated with the Reform Period (1978-present)"-- Provided by publisher.