This is not a bit, or a take, but critically held belief. The pefect RPG would start and end with the phrase “No great men, only the great many” with nothing in-between.
Western pop art in general pushes for the great individual hero who is the smartest guy in the room, has all the witty lines, and ultimately saves the day. This is true even in something like music where the art is solely attributed to the creative genius of the artiste and not the various sound engineers and studio performers who make it happen as well.
This is extremely noticeable when you compare Chinese films made during Maoist China. In those films, the protagonists are never the smartest guy in the room or have the wittiest lines. They don't really save the day either. By Western standards, the protagonists almost come off as complete rubes. Likewise, the supporting characters don't come up with the good ideas either. Some of it is essentially "Chairman Mao wrote in On Guerilla Warfare that [reads a passage from On Guerilla Warfare]," but a lot of it is "Hey, I heard the village next to us are doing X, Y, and Z. Maybe we should do that as well." Good ideas are rarely attributed to anyone on screen, but either to Mao or some off-screen character or setting. And when it's attributed to an actual on-screen character, it's often something like a 6 year old girl or a 12 year old boy, basically someone who you would least expect to have good ideas.
They do this because they want to place the events of the film within a much larger revolutionary context. The characters are a part of a village and the villages are just two of many villages which compose the Chinese masses. "This other village came up with the idea" is to say that the ingenuity of the Chinese masses, of which both the on-screen village and off-screen village are a part of, came up with the idea. The Chinese masses are their own liberators, and it's through their discipline, conviction, ingenuity, and fervor that they liberate themselves.
Western pop art in general pushes for the great individual hero who is the smartest guy in the room, has all the witty lines, and ultimately saves the day. This is true even in something like music where the art is solely attributed to the creative genius of the artiste and not the various sound engineers and studio performers who make it happen as well.
This is extremely noticeable when you compare Chinese films made during Maoist China. In those films, the protagonists are never the smartest guy in the room or have the wittiest lines. They don't really save the day either. By Western standards, the protagonists almost come off as complete rubes. Likewise, the supporting characters don't come up with the good ideas either. Some of it is essentially "Chairman Mao wrote in On Guerilla Warfare that [reads a passage from On Guerilla Warfare]," but a lot of it is "Hey, I heard the village next to us are doing X, Y, and Z. Maybe we should do that as well." Good ideas are rarely attributed to anyone on screen, but either to Mao or some off-screen character or setting. And when it's attributed to an actual on-screen character, it's often something like a 6 year old girl or a 12 year old boy, basically someone who you would least expect to have good ideas.
They do this because they want to place the events of the film within a much larger revolutionary context. The characters are a part of a village and the villages are just two of many villages which compose the Chinese masses. "This other village came up with the idea" is to say that the ingenuity of the Chinese masses, of which both the on-screen village and off-screen village are a part of, came up with the idea. The Chinese masses are their own liberators, and it's through their discipline, conviction, ingenuity, and fervor that they liberate themselves.