ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the 2004 TV adaptation of a Red Classics film, On Guard beneath the Neon Lights, as a case study to explore how the Communist legacy is reshaped for popular consumption in an era drastically different from the revolutionary past. It argues that by distancing consumption from political ideology and recasting it in a moral framework, the new version of On Guard softens the bias against consumerism and the wealthy present in the 1960s version. The adaptation thus appropriates the consumerist present to serve the past, making the Communist practice of frugality more reasonable and less alienating to the post-Mao audience.
