MCLC: Ai Weiwei's leg-gun pose

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Ai Weiwei's leg-gun pose
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Source: The Guardian (6/13/14):
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/13/ai-weiwei-leg-gun-photo
-instagram-protest-meme

Is that leg loaded? Ai Weiwei starts web craze with mysterious 'leg-gun'
pose
The Chinese artist has sparked an internet meme by posting pictures of
people with their legs raised and pointing like rifles. Is it his latest
revolutionary act? A new dance craze? Or the next Angelina Jolie's thigh?
We weigh up the options
By Nell Frizzell 

When it comes to selfies, you don't get more revolutionary than a
grey-haired Chinese man in nothing but pants and socks, firing his own
thigh like a gun. Throw in a traditional rice-picker straw hat and the
fact that the man in question is internationally famous artist and
activist Ai Weiwei <http://instagram.com/p/pGw5N6qD_v/#>, and you have
yourself an explosive meme <http://instagram.com/aiww>.

The question, of course, is what Ai Weiwei intended with his aggressively
acrobatic pose, posted to his Twitter and Instagram feeds at 5.49pm on
Wednesday. An email to his team elicited no response, while the internet
elicited more stabs in the dark than a production of Hamlet.

One blog retweeted by Weiwei, Beijing Cream, noted the similarity of the
pose to one seen in the Chinese ballet The Red Detachment of Women. The
ballet was one of the eight model operas that monopolised the 1960s
Chinese national landscape during the cultural revolution; a
state-sanctioned depiction of one woman's rise through the Communist
party. Coming, as it has, just after the 25th anniversary of the protests
in Tiananmen Square, suddenly Weiwei's photo looked a lot like a satirical
comment on China's onerous cultural control. Forget giving state
oppression the finger; this is giving it all six barrels from your
facetiously-raised thigh. It is cocking your leg at the regime.

A Chinese skateboarder in leg-gun pose, posted by Ai Weiwei on Instagram.
Photograph: Ai Weiwei/InstagramOr is it? While a reference to The Red
Detachment of Women is no doubt subversive – riot grrl band Bikini Kill
used it as an unofficial video for their 1993 single Rebel Girl
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZxxhxjgnC0> for a reason – it is also
playful. While lots of his followers have labelled their photos with the
#endgunviolence hashtag, there are also plenty of people excitedly
proclaiming "the rifle – new dance move!" or asking "Is this the new
planking?"

The 100-plus photos submitted by Weiwei's followers, re-enacting his pose,
range from the sublime to the ridiculous. In one, a small Asian boy fires
his leg at a huge ceramic tortoise. In another, a woman fires her
stilettoed leg at a tongue-poking pug. There are leg-guns on skateboards,
feet pointing at tanks on TV, assassination scenes, calves trained on
wall-mounted stag heads, toes aiming at acoustic guitarists, a leg-firing
Kermit the Frog and one man holding his toddler's chubby leg
<http://instagram.com/p/pIdQvqKDyK/>like the world's softest machine gun.

Weiwei even posted another in-his-pants shot on 13 June, which sees him
firing a young boy's leg at a retaliating woman, by a small lake.
The caption on Weiwei's first post translates as "Beijing anti-terrorism
series". This points to several possible interpretations. First, this is a
physical subversion of the propaganda paraded across Beijing's stages
since the 1960s. Second, this is Weiwei's way of marking the
quarter-century anniversary of Beijing's student-led demonstrations in
Tiananmen Square, known in much of the world as the '89 Democracy
Movement, but termed a "counter-revolutionary riot" by the Chinese
government. Other internet commentators like Nikhil Sonnad, for the blog
Quartz, have drawn reference to recent US school shootings and the violent
tear gas attacks against protesters in Brazil over the World Cup. And, of
course, you can't caption a shooting leg as anti-terrorist without
bringing to mind the machine gun limb of Cherry Darling
<http://media.theiapolis.com/d4/hK0/i1XJV/k4/l1Y55/wZK/rose-mcgowan-as-cher
ry-darling-in-planet.jpg> in Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse film Planet
Terror <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBi00ZiqIv4#t=1m33s>. In that
film, Darling's thigh arsenal is used to attack zombies infected by the
deadly biochemical agent known as DC2 or "Project Terror". Is his leg-gun
Weiwei's way of telling us not to drift into zombie-like political apathy?

Weiwei isn't the only artist attempting to stir up revolutionary fervour
on Instagram. Madonna, between her #unapologeticbitch
<http://instagram.com/p/o42zSIGEU4/#> snaps, has been posting everything
from giant horse lamps to pictures of Maya Angelou under the hashtags
#artforfreedom and #revolutionoflove. Art for Freedom is, apparently, a
global initiative by Vice and Madonna
<http://www.artforfreedom.com/>"encouraging creative expression that
brings awareness to human rights violations". The guest curator for April
was that great revolutionary and human-rights hero, Miley Cyrus.

Weiwei's so-called leg-gun series certainly raises more questions than it
answers. Whether this is a political gesture, a genuinely subversive
criticism of state-controlled media, an artistic expression or simply his
answer to the famous "Angelina Jolie's leg" meme remains a mystery. But
the fact that one underwear-flashing, calf-clasping photo can produce a
global conversation about state freedom, violence, Chinese communism,
artistic interpretation and global power speaks volumes about the potency
of the artist in our internet age.

As one Chinese commenter said on The Red Detachment of Women image posted
by Weiwei, "This firing made loopholes." We'll just have to wait and see
where those loopholes lead.