Is La Chinoise woke?

The story exists mainly to deliver a woke ideological lecture. Themes are heavy-handed, preachy, and feel forced or unnatural. Entertainment value is secondary, and viewers frequently feel lectured or alienated.

Wokeness Analysis

La Chinoise is a 1967 docufiction film by Jean-Luc Godard centered on five young French university students forming a radical Maoist cell called the Aden Arabie group in a borrowed Parisian apartment. The narrative revolves around their intense study of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, Marxist-Leninist texts, and discussions on applying the Chinese Cultural Revolution to Western society through revolutionary violence, including plans for terrorism against cultural institutions like the Sorbonne and the assassination of a Soviet cultural figure. The film, loosely adapted from Dostoevsky's Demons, features Brechtian techniques with direct addresses to the camera, ideological monologues, blackboard erasures of Western cultural figures in favor of revolutionary art, and debates on activism versus revisionism. It explicitly promotes Maoist ideology, anti-bourgeois sentiment, rejection of Soviet communism as revisionist, and the use of violence to dismantle educational and cultural systems. While containing satirical elements highlighting the students' youthful naivety and bungled actions, the core purpose is to explore and advance New Left Maoist thought in the context of 1960s events like the Vietnam War and China's Cultural Revolution. This makes the story primarily a vehicle for delivering heavy-handed political lectures on class struggle, cultural revolution, and anti-imperialism, with entertainment secondary to ideological indoctrination. Godard uses the medium to politicize cinema itself, aligning with activist filmmaking that prioritizes messaging over narrative cohesion or escapism.

Plot

In Paris, five young people form a radical Maoist group called the Aden Arabie cell while staying in a lavish apartment. Led by philosophy student Véronique, who seeks to dismantle cultural institutions through terrorism, and her actor boyfriend Guillaume, the group studies Mao's Little Red Book, Marxist texts, and debates revolutionary tactics. They paint political slogans on walls, expel a member for revisionist views, and plan an assassination that goes awry due to mistaken identity. The film explores their ideological fervor, internal conflicts, and bungled attempts at action amid discussions of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and anti-bourgeois struggle.