Parables and miracles: Vygotsky and the evolution of Magic Brush Ma Liang / Parábolas y milagros: Vygotski y la evolución del pincel mágico de Ma Liang

Abstract

L.S. Vygotsky lived in a time of revolutionary transition: artists were shifting from a nineteenth-century naturalism that had ‘spread life into art’ to a twentieth-century modernism that would ‘spread art into everyday life’. This paper traces a comparable shift from the twentieth century to the twenty-first with a case study of the allegorical story 神笔马良 (Magic Brush Ma Liang). We follow editorial changes from the story’s origins in pre-revolutionary Chinese folklore to a central role in establishing mass literacy to an elementary school primer to a gay male romance webtoon for the vicarious gaze of young girls. At each stage, we consider three perspectives: from ‘above’, we examine the cultural-historical moment, from ‘below’ the raw materials and from ‘around and about’, the story content: the setting, characters and dramatic problem. We find that the tale is a parable indeed, not for reality but for these parallel perspectives. Yet the tale is also a miracle: changes observable from one perspective can correlate with and even help bring about changes in the other.