Lü Ban

Lü Ban (; 1913–1976), born Hao Enxing , was a Chinese actor, comedian and film director, and a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He was the author of the first Chinese satirical comedy film in 1956. The works released during that brief period departed from the state-sanctioned topics aiming to legitimize the new state, offering "moral edification and celebrating the triumph of revolutionary virtue over reactionary villainy". and exposed the hierarchical relationships occurring between the cadres, while his next film, The Unfinished Comedy (Meiyou wancheng de xiju, 1957), critically dealing among others with the sensitive topic of film censorship, and since described as notorious, was labelled as a "poisonous weed" during the Anti-Rightist Movement and banned before its release. Lü Ban was accused of "mocking new persons and new things in a new Chinese society in the name of comedy" and in general, undermining socialist morality and attacking the Party. The Unfinished Comedy ended Lü Ban's career as shortly afterward, Lü Ban himself was banned from directing for life and sentenced to internal exile; he had to abandon work on film-making, leaving behind several unfinished projects, and died in 1976 without being allowed to work on another film.

Lü Ban's fate was one of the reasons for other Chinese film makers putting more effort into self-censorship and abandoning the genre of satirical comedy (the next one would not appear in Chinese theaters until the mid-80s); for years to come, the dominant model of comedy in China became one that avoided conflict, and presented safe stories involving "model socialist citizens" learning how to better live in the "harmonious socialist society".