Mo Yan’s language is striking indeed, but it is striking because it is diseased. The disease is caused by the conscious renunciation of China’s cultural past at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Mo Yan’s writing is in fact a product of the aesthetic ideologies of Socialist China.
Actor Robert Ryan spent a good deal of his life promoting peace, civil rights and other social causes. In his long film career, he did something more daring: He willingly became the face of the very evils he denounced. In “Crossfire” (1947), Ryan plays a soldier whose hatred of Jews leads to murder.