This discussion will revolve around Luo Zhongli's iconographic painting, Father (1980), in the context of cultural changes in the 1980s' China. In particular, the session will question what it means to 'see things as they are' at a time when socialist realism was still the dominant paradigm even as the influence of Western forms was gaining purchase. Luo's seemingly uncomplicated image of an ordinary old peasant has a disturbing effect on its contemporary viewers, to the point that an effort to tame the image has left a 'stain' on the work itself. The strangeness of the image is attributed to the propagation of socialist representative images and its effect on what is considered 'ordinary' and 'common.' The significance of the artist's rediscovery the 'commoner' is discussed in relation to the emergence of a new cinematic language.