The Red Detachment of Women is a celebration of two worlds that almost exist. The first is a tropical paradise inhabited by female soldiers, as imagined in Madame Mao’s The Red Detachment of Women (ballet film: 1970). In her Red Detachment, a peasant girl undergoes a political awakening: the homicidal rage directed at her landlord is tamed, and she becomes a regulated, productive military agent. The second is an all-women state-of-the-art industrial pork processing plant, accommodating both Chinese factories’ preference for female workers with the latest in scientific management techniques.
