On the same day as our experience in Tiananmen, where Mao is insultingly preserved like some pharaoh buried with his slaves, we watched a teen at Mao nightclub plugged into a Marshall stack tuning as he glanced at the parodic, iconographic reduction of that dictator’s hair -as though Hitler’s mustache were used to market cola. Such recontextualization is powerful to see in a land where the dictator’s portrait still hangs, the reclamation of his name and image a proof of the inevitability of change.
This post reminded me of a comment in reply to the NY Times photoblog post releasing the new perspective of the so-called “Tank Man” at Tiananmen Square.
How shallow and cheap it is to be moved by a picture took from the 10th floor porch of a 5-star hotel, then get a second round high by another shot behind piles of bikes and bush just couple steps away from the same hotel.
Disney cartons could dab a human voice on an animal role , but please don’t rely on those silly things to pretend that you know anything about that creature. — Refein
It’s one thing to use an image as a Rorscach test—a launching pad to pontificate about the things that you think. But to give meaning to a scene by ascribing thoughts and intent to persons in that scene is to presume in a bad way. Taking a narrow course, I’ll explain it this way: that guy is Chinese, you are not, therefore you likely know little about him even (especially?) after frollicking around the country for a month or whatever.
