Reflections on a Broken Vase

Ai Weiwei: According to What? (2014)

Photo: Daniel Azoulay / Pérez Art Museum Miami

 

 

I. 

 

There was an amusing story in the news a few days ago about a four-year-old boy accidently breaking a 3,500 year-old vase at a museum in Israel. Apparently, he had been attempting to look inside the large jar, which would have once been used to store and transport either wine or olive oil [1].

 

Apart from demonstrating that curiosity isn't merely fatal to cats, it reminded me of Ai Weiwei's controversial decision to deliberately drop and shatter a Han Dynasty [2] Urn back in 1995 in an attempt to tell us something about the construction of economic and cultural value ... [3]

II.

 

This act by a globally famous Chinese artist - and a hero to many for his activism - was clearly intended as a political provocation. 

 

And that was precisely how it was received by the powers that be in Beijing, leaving Ai Weiwei to remind members of the CCP that Chairman Mao had actively encouraged the widespread destruction of antiquities during the Cultural Revolution, on the grounds that in order to build a new world one must first let go of the past and smash old objects, values, beliefs, ideas, and customs.   

 

However, Ai Weiwei failed to see the irony when a Dominican artist called Maximo Caminero decided to attack his installation at the Pérez Museum in Miami in 2014, smashing another 2000 year-old Han dynasty urn that the former had appropriated - along with others - by painting them with cheerful colours. 

 

Caminero was, apparently, protesting the fact that the museum wasn't showing enough work by local artists, but, he had, as Jonathan Jones says, "accidentally punched a massive hole in the logic of contemporary art" [4] and, arguably, exposed Ai Weiwei's own hypocrisy; his condemation of Caminero's act as nothing more than vandalism, leaving him at the very least on conceptually fragile ground. 

 

As for Caminero, unlike the young boy at the Hecht Museum who escaped any punishment, he was found guilty of criminal mischief and given a suspended sentence of eighteen months, plus a hundred hours of community service. He was also obliged to pay $10,000 compensation [5].   

   

Notes

 

[1] The vase is to be expertly repaired and placed back on display shortly. For more on this story as reported on artnet.com, click here.

[2] The Han era in China was contemporary with the Roman Empire in the West, lasting from 206 BCE until 220 CE.

 

[3] The work is entitled Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) and is captured in a series of three black and white photographs. Ai Weiwei described the urn as a 'cultural readymade'. 

 

[4] Jonathan Jones 'Who's the vandal: Ai Weiwei or the man who smashed his Han urn?' The Guardian (18 Feb 2014): click here to read online. 

 

[5] It might also be noted that two years prior to the incident in Miama, a Swiss art collector by the name of Uli Sigg, who happened to own one of Ai Weiwei's urns - painted with the Coca-Cola logo - decided to drop it on the floor in the same manner as his hero. This was captured in a photographic triptych called Fragments of History. It's interesting how one act of destruction can trigger others in a chain reaction. 

 

Notes on Charlie Chaplin's Closing Speech to 'The Great Dictator'

Charlie Chaplin as the Jewish Barber and 

Adenoid Hynkel in The Great Dictator (1941)

 

 

I. 

 

There's probably only one thing worse in the modern political imaginary than a great dictator and that's an evil tyrant. But even the former is bad enough in the eyes of those for whom power should belong to the people and not held by a single individual who, it is believed, will be invariably (and absolutely) corrupted by its possession. 

 

Any positive associations that the term may have had were lost once and for all during the 20th-century. Thanks to figures such as Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao [1], dictators are now viewed by those within the liberal-democratic world as violent megalomaniacs who oppress their peoples and bring death and chaos in their wake [2]. 

Having said that, it seems they can also inspire laughter as well as moral hand-wringing and hypocrisy, as illustrated by the 2012 film starring Sacha Baron Cohen, The Dictator (dir. Larry Charles) and, seventy years prior, the equally unfunny work of satirical slapstick that many regard as Chaplin's masterpiece, The Great Dictator (1940) ...

 

 

II.  

I don't know why, but I've never liked Charlie Chaplin: this despite the fact that, according to Lawrence, "there is a greater essential beauty in Charlie Chaplin's odd face, than there ever was in Valentino's" [3]. For even if this gleam of something pure makes beautiful, that doesn't mean it makes good and true; and it certainly doesn't guarantee to make humorous. 

 

Chaplin is mostly remembered for playing an anonymous tramp figure - a character whom I regard as the antithesis of the bum as hobo-punk given us in the songs of Haywire Mac; for whereas the latter celebrates his life on the road and railways, the former is keen to improve his lot and dreams of one day living a comfortable middle-class existence.

 

But in the feature-length anti-fascist film of 1941 - which Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, and starred in - he plays both the nameless Jewish Barber and the Great Dictator of Tomainia, Adenoid Hynkel (a parody of Adolf Hitler that some find hilarious and uncannily accurate, others, like me, a bit lazy in that it perpetuates the idea that the latter was just a buffoon and an imposter).

 

Probably the most famous scene is the five-minute speech that Chaplin delivers at the end of the film [4]. Dropping his comic mask and appearing to speak directly to his global audience, he makes an earnest plea for human decency and human progress, encouraging people to rise up against dictators and unite in peace and brotherhood, whatever their race or religion. 

The thing with such romantic moralism is that it flies in the face of history and relies heavily on emotion and rhetoric for its effect, rather than argument - ironically, in much the same manner as fascist propaganda. 

 

"We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery We don't want to hate and despise one another." 

 

Is there any evidence for this ultra-optimistic belief that the "hate of men will pass"? 

 

I doubt it. 

 

I would dispute also that our cleverness has made us "hard and unkind" and what we need is to think less and feel more; again, such irrationalism and anti-intellectualism is ironically central to fascism.

 

Perhaps most interestingly, Chaplin echoes Oliver Mellors with his diatribe against "machine men with machine minds and machine hearts". But even Mellors knew that such people now make up the vast bulk of humanity, not just those who govern; that it is the fate of mankind to become-cyborg with rubber tubing for guts and legs made from tin; motor-cars and cinemas and aeroplanes sucking the vitality out of us all [5]. 

 

Chaplin rightly foresaw that the age of the great dictators would soon pass - in Western Europe at least - but has the triumph of liberal democracy resulted in a life that is free and beautiful and where science and progress "lead to all men's happiness" ...? 

 

Again, I don't think so. 

 

And, like Mellors, I increasingly find comfort not in the dream of a new human future, but in a post-human world: 

 

"Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the human species, and the long pause that follows before some other species crops up, it calms you more than anything else." [6]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For an earlier post on these three great dictators (and one mad poet), click here. 

 

[2] Unless they happen to be allies, in which case they are said to be strong leaders providing stability in their region of the world, but we won't get into that here.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 146.

 

[4] Click here to play this scene (I would suggest having a sick bag at the ready). Even some fans of Chaplin's concede that this spoils the film as a work of art. 

 

[5] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217. 

 

[6] Ibid., p. 218. 

      This is similar to how Rupert Birkin felt in Women in Love; see pp. 127-128 of the Cambridge Edition (1987), ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen. 

 

 

Musical bonus: Penetration, 'Don't Dictate', (Virgin Records, 1977): click here for the studio version and here for a fantastic live performance of the song at the Electric Circus, Manchester (August 1977). 

 

   

The First Rule of Chinese Fight Club: the Authorities Always Win!

Trust me. Everything's gonna be fine.

Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999) 

 

 

I. 

 

One has many good reasons to despise the Chinese Communist Party: for what they did to sparrows, for example, during the Four Pests campaign; for the mindless destruction of the four olds during the Cultural Revolution; and for the misery they have inflicted on the entire world thanks to the Wuhan coronavirus.

 

But now there's a new reason to hate the CCP: for what they have done to the ending of David Fincher's Fight Club (1999), one of my favourite films ...

 

 

II. 

 

Although recently authorising the movie's availability on the streaming platform Tencent Video, the censor-morons of the CCP just couldn't allow it to pass without imposing their own brutal edit.

 

Thus, whilst the original film closes with a strangely touching scene in which the unnamed narrator-protagonist (played by Edward Norton) holds hands with Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) and watches as the world of financial services comes tumbling down in an explosive finale courtesy of Project Mayhem, the new Chinese version cuts this scene entirely and replaces it with a black screen upon which a caption reads:

 

The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. 

 

It is also revealed that Norton's schizophrenic character was sent to a lunatic asylum for psychological treatment. 

 

This is so ridiculous: we are now living in a world in which the defenders of the banks and credit card companies are the Chinese Communist Party ...! One is tempted to remind them of Chairman Mao's famous line oft-repeated by members of the revolutionary Red Guard:

 

Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: It is right to rebel.

Anyway, for those who would like to be reminded of - or perhaps watch for the first time - the original ending of Fight Club in all its terrible beauty and dark humour, click here.  

This post is in memory of Robert Paulson. 

 

 

Update: 07-02-22: It seems that the original ending to Fight Club has been restored in China. I doubt this was due to the above post, but as a friend of mine joked: TTA 1 CCP 0.

You Say You Want a Revolution ...?

I.

Initially, Black Lives Matter was a civil rights movement for a younger, angrier, more woke generation of activists and campaigners concerned about issues to do with racial justice and equality. But it seems to now be in the vanguard of a broader movement demanding a full-scale cultural revolution and an end to what they perceive to be a violently oppressive and institutionally racist old order.

Of course, we've seen this call for a total transformation of everyday life (and the subsequent humiliation or destruction of one's enemies) before: in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, for example; and, more recently, in Mao's China in the 1960s.

It wasn't pleasant then and it isn't pleasant now. Nor do I think it's going to end any happier. Restrictions on freedom of speech and the insistence that everyone toe the politically correct line or face the consequences, never do. Nor do attempts to sanitise the past and purge society of undesirable elements. 

To protest and to rebel may be justified; and, doubtless, there are many old habits, customs, and ideas that need to be challenged. But to destroy works of art and historical artefacts in the name of an ideology that believes itself to be infallible and morally superior is something we should be extremely wary of.

For I think the poet Heinrich Heine was right in 1820 and he's still right now, two hundred years later: Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people. To their credit, even The Beatles understood this; as their counter-revolutionary track 'Revolution' demonstrates ...


II.

Inspired by anti-war protests and student uprisings, John Lennon's lyrics express sympathy with the need for radical social change, but serious reservations over the violent tactics adopted by some on the so-called New Left. The song concludes that there's no need for direct action as everything's gonna be alright (that is to say, ideals of peace and love will triumph in the end). It also explicitly dismisses the cult of personality surrounding Chairman Mao.

Of course, countercultural comrades and hardline communists of every variety immediately branded Lennon a traitor and collaborator. They were shocked not only by his Transcendental fatalism, but by his humour and expressed need to see details (or a plan) for how a revolution might work. The New Left Review dismissed the song as a 'lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear' and even the French film director Jean-Luc Godard denounced the Beatle for his apoliticism and suggested that he and other band members had been corrupted by money.

Duly chastened by the criticism he received, Lennon subsequently declared himself to be a revolutionary after all. However, in an interview shortly before his death in 1980, he again voiced his rejection of political violence and terror and reaffirmed the more pacifist sentiments expressed in 'Revolution': 'Don't expect me on the barricades unless it's with flowers.'           

To be honest, I don't have much affection for Lennon. But I admire the stand he took here and his scorn for the militant asceticism and extremer than thou snobbery of those on the far left openly motivated by resentment and hatred. And I think that those who call naively for revolution today and pose with clenched fists held aloft, should stop to consider that they ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow ...

Play: The Beatles, 'Revolution', B-side to the single release 'Hey Jude', (Apple, 26 August 1968): click here.

Note: the above promo film, dir. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was first broadcast on Top of the Pops (BBC One) on 19 September, 1968. 

See: Daniel Chirot, You Say You Want a Revolution?, (Princeton University Press, 2020). In this new study, Chirot - a Professor of Russian and Eurasian studies at the University of Washington - examines why most modern revolutions have ended in bloodshed and failure and what lessons they hold for today's world of growing extremism. The image above is from the front cover to this text.

On Dead Sparrows and the Great Leap Forward

Poor Dead Sparrow 

Stephen Alexander (2017)

I pretty much like all birds (with obvious exceptions, such as the vulture, ostrich and flamingo). But, mostly, I like the little birds that live in my garden; robins, blue tits and sparrows. The latter in particular hold a special place in my affection and the fact their numbers have fallen in England so dramatically over the last forty years is a cause of great sadness. I miss their company.  

Not only do I not trust people who fail to find sparrows anything other than delightful, but I despise those who would wish them harm; be it Queen Elizabeth I or Chairman Mao. The former, for example, passed a law in 1556 that branded sparrows as vermin and placed a small bounty on their tiny heads. Whilst for the latter, sparrows were one of the four main pests in the People's Republic of China (the other three being rats, flies, and mosquitoes) and, in 1958, Mao launched a public campaign of extermination as part of the so-called Great Leap Forward.

All citizens, including solders and schoolchildren, were instructed to loudly bang pots and pans and to shout and scream at the birds, thus preventing them from resting in the trees or on rooftops. As a result, the exhausted and terrified sparrows literally fell dead from the sky. Nest were also destroyed, eggs smashed and chicks killed.

Starting in the countryside, the campaign eventually moved to the towns and cities, including Peking, where staff at foreign embassies watched on in horrified amazement. The personnel of the Polish Embassy - to their great credit - refused to allow any bird abuse on their premises, but Chinese citizens surrounded the building and began two days of constant drumming. As a result, even the sparrows that had sought refuge in the embassy were eventually killed.

By 1960, however, this mad avian genocide had resulted in a plague of crop-destroying insects of biblical proportions. With rice yields falling and faced with an ecological catastrophe, Mao was obliged to redirect the campaign away from bourgeois sparrows - all birds were regarded as animals of capitalism by the communist regime - and towards bedbugs.

Unfortunately, it was too late and a famine followed that was so severe in nature, that tens of millions of Chinese starved to death. And whilst that's not usually something I'd be flippant about, in this case one can't help feeling that it serves 'em fucking right.  

Chairman Mao and the Swindle of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Image of Chairman Mao:
uncyclopedia.wikia.com

Traditional Chinese Medicine is, of course, an entirely bogus modern phenomenon; a pseudoscience promoted by Chairman Mao that possesses no valid mechanism of action or evidence for its treatments. It's no more effective than the equally dubious remedies offered within European witchcraft.  

Not that this stops millions of believers around the world using obscure herbal remedies, ingesting ground up animal parts - such as tiger bone and rhino horn - or having pins stuck in them in order to release a flow of vital energy along the body's meridians. Attempts to locate these mysterious pathways, or to identify this potency known as qi, have so far proved fruitless. Primarily, this is because they don't exist.

   

Practitioners of alternative medicine, however, don't allow such minor details or anatomical facts to stop them peddling their services and products. If modern knowledge of human physiology and pathology proves problematic to their teachings, they simply start talking about cosmic notions of yin and yang, patterns of harmony and disharmony, or the five phases. Such traditional Chinese wisdom is also, of course, entirely false - if pleasing to metaphysicians everywhere.

Happily, at least some Chinese philosophers are prepared to admit as much. In 2006, for example, Zhang Gongyao published an article entitled 'Farewell to Traditional Chinese Medicine', arguing that TCM in both theory and practice was absurd and should be exposed as such. The Chinese government, however, keenly aware of global export revenues, insisted that it had an important role to play in healthcare and deserved future development. 

And this brings us back to Chairman Mao, who, almost single-handedly invented TCM as we know it today. Let me elaborate by summarizing a recent article by Alan Levinovitz, who is an assistant professor of Chinese Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University ...

Initially, following their victory in the Civil War, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party ridiculed TCM as irrational and backward; something contrary to the Party's programme of modernization and scientific progress. However, when it became clear that they would never be able to afford to establish a national healthcare programme reliant upon highly skilled doctors, expensive drugs, and advanced surgical techniques, Mao revised this position. Now TCM was proudly held up as a great national resource to be developed in opposition to the bourgeois medicine of capitalist imperialism. 

Further, Mao realised that if only the traditional methods could be marketed in the right manner, they could be sold to gullible foreigners. And so the Chinese Communist party set about standardizing TCM into a single theoretical and practical system that could be taught as an alternative (holistic) science concerned with preventative and complimentary healthcare. 

Next, they set about providing Westerners with sensational - but faked - evidence of what TCM could do. Eager to subscribe to the myth of the ancient wisdom of the east, this was, outrageously, accepted at face value by large numbers of the public, as well as many professionals who really should have known better. Before long a craze for TCM - particularly acupuncture - boomed and today you can get all kinds of quack treatments on the NHS! 

Levinovitz nicely puts this into a cultural and historical context:

"The reason so many people take Chinese medicine seriously, at least in part, is that it  was reinvented by one of the most powerful propaganda machines of all time and then consciously marketed to a West disillusioned by its own spiritual traditions. The timing couldn't have been better. Postmodernism was sweeping the academy, its valuable insights quickly degrading into naïve relativism. Thomas Kuhn had just published his theory of paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions ... Alan Watts was introducing hippies to mind-blowing Eastern philosophy; Joseph Campbell was preaching the power of myth. Sick of Christianity and guilty about past imperialist sins, the West was ready to be healed by Mao's sanitized version of Chinese medicine."  

He concludes:

"Ultimately, however, the existence of qi, acupuncture meridians, and the Triple Energizer is no more inherently plausible than that of demons, the four humours, or the healing power of God. It's just that Mao swindled us ..."

Notes: 

Alan Levinovitz's article in the online magazine Slate entitled 'Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine', can be found by clicking here.

My thanks to Zena McKeown for inspiring this post following a recent conversation on the topic.