MCLC: tank man

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: tank man 
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (8/15/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/world/asia/amid-tribute-to-king-of-pop-an
-echo-of-tiananmen-square.html

Amid Tribute to King of Pop, an Echo of Tiananmen Square
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — The image flashed for only a few seconds on an enormous video
screen, but it was enough to catch the attention of some concertgoers in
the Chinese capital.

Then began days of head-scratching and hand-wringing over an unlikely
political flash point: the appearance during a Michael Jackson tribute
concert of the famous “Tank Man” photograph of June 1989. The most common
version of the image, distributed worldwide by The Associated Press, shows
a lone man facing down a line of tanks near Tiananmen Square the day after
Chinese troops killed hundreds or thousands of peaceful protesters.

As the Chinese might say, the image is as rare as phoenix feathers and
unicorn horns here, where the Communist Party suppresses any mention of
the 1989 violence. Its sudden appearance at the opening performance of the
China leg of Cirque du Soleil’s “Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour”
underscored the challenges that governments face in controlling history in
the modern age. Censors can work overtime scrutinizing content for taboo
messages, but some inevitably slip by.

In imperial times, China’s rulers tried to exercise strict control over
what versions of history were fit for public consumption. “The punishment
for bringing sensitive historical matters to light could be death,” said
John Delury, co-author of a new book on modern Chinese history, “Wealth
and Power.”

“Today, of course, Chinese, with the world’s largest online community,
live in a world of radically expanded information borders,” he said. “Yet
there remain certain taboo images and texts that, even when iconic at a
global level, are verboten to Chinese eyes. It takes a tremendous amount
of energy for the state to maintain this screen over knowledge of the
past, and a vast amount slips through the censors today, just as it did
back in imperial days. This is what Deng Xiaoping referred to as ‘The
flies come in when you open a window for some fresh air.’ ”

The Cirque du Soleil dance show used Mr. Jackson’s music, including “They
Don’t Care About Us,” an overtly political song whose lyrics are full of
rage. “Tell me what has become of my rights?/Am I invisible because you
ignore me?/Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now/I’m tired of
bein’ the victim of shame,” the song says. Along with the lyrics, Cirque
du Soleil featured a montage of images showing civil rights abuses and
protests, including that of the Tank Man.

The sight of Tank Man resulted in “an audible collective gasp from the
audience,” wrote Stephen George, one of the thousands of concert
attendees, in a blog post on the Web site of “That’s Beijing,” an
expatriate-oriented magazine where Mr. George works. The post went up on
Saturday but has since been deleted.

The moment “felt genuinely quite radical,” Mr. George wrote. “As my friend
commented, ‘I can’t imagine ever being witness to that image being shown
in Beijing again, even if I stay here for another 50 years.’ ”

Reports of Tank Man’s appearance circulated online. For some, it evoked
Bjork’s Shanghai concert in 2008, where she surprised concertgoers by
calling for Tibetan independence.

In this instance, Cirque du Soleil quickly cut the image from subsequent
shows in Beijing. It is unclear whether tour organizers had come under
pressure from officials.

A tour spokeswoman, Laura Silverman, sent an e-mail this week to The South
China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, that said “the image was
removed immediately and is no longer shown.” She also said the full show
had been submitted to the Chinese Ministry of Culture for approval before
the first China concert.

In an e-mailed statement on Thursday, Ms. Silverman said: “We believe in
diversity and are apolitical. We also respect any laws and cultural
uniqueness of the countries where we perform.”

The show is scheduled to open in Shanghai on Friday and in Hong Kong next
Thursday. Since 2011, when the show opened, it has grossed about $300
million, and a review in The New York Times called it a “galumphing
sensory assault.”

Ms. Silverman’s assertion that the show had been officially reviewed in
China has raised the question of whether a government official allowed
Tank Man to stay in the video. The Culture Ministry did not respond to
questions on Thursday.

It could be, though, that blanket censorship of all things related to June
4, 1989, has resulted in such widespread amnesia about the episode that
even some censors can no longer recognize the taboo material for what it
is.

There have been past cases of this. In 2008, Beijing News ran a profile of
the veteran photojournalist Liu Heung Shing, who covered China in the late
1970s and 1980s for Time magazine and The Associated Press. The article
featured several of his photographs <http://www.wumii.com/item/PEegrQAk>,
including one of the injured and dead being taken from the scene of the
June 4 killings by rickshaw drivers.

When officials realized what had happened, they ordered the newspaper
pulled off the streets. Mr. Liu said he later asked employees at Beijing
News what had taken place. It turned out there had been an empty space on
the page before it went to press, and an editor with a keen interest in
history pulled one of Mr. Liu’s photographs from the Internet to fill the
hole. The editor apparently had no idea what the image represented.

“It’s ironic, because even the guy interested in history didn’t seem to
know China’s modern history that well,” Mr. Liu said. “Otherwise, it
wouldn’t have gotten through.”

Officials made inquiries and determined the mistake had been a genuine
one, Mr. Liu said.

Such mistakes are more likely to occur with younger Chinese. “You’d be
surprised how those born in the late 1980s and 1990s, how ignorant they
are,” said Mr. Liu. He was the A.P. chief photographer who pushed editors
in 1989 to publish the Tank Man photograph, which was taken by Jeff
Widener. (There are at least four versions of the famous scene, each
captured by a photographer shooting from the Beijing Hotel.)

Last November, before the 18th Party Congress, during which Communist
Party leaders were expected to gather in Beijing for a handover of power,
those running an official propaganda Web site for the event posted
photographs from past congresses. There was a surprising one from the 12th
Party Congress in 1982
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/11/ministry-of-truth-18th-party-congress
/> that showed Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, leaders associated with the
1989 protests who have been erased from official histories. The photograph
was posted on Nov. 1, but by Nov. 4 had been replaced.

China Digital Times, a Web site based in Berkeley, Calif., that tracks the
Chinese news media, said that propaganda officials at the State Council,
China’s cabinet, had ordered news organizations not to report on the
appearance of the photograph.

There is another explanation for how Tank Man might have gotten past the
censors screening Cirque du Soleil: the image might have flashed by too
quickly for officials to notice. At least one person in the audience said
she had missed it on Friday night.

“Everything is very overwhelming,” Vera Penêda, 33, a Portuguese
journalist, said of the show at the MasterCard Center, which was used for
basketball matches during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “On the stage there
are lots of dancers, and all the outfits are amazing, so I didn’t pay
attention to the photo.”

The friends who had accompanied her also missed Tank Man, she said, adding
that she noticed no “collective gasp” from the audience. Ms. Penêda
learned about the image popping up only later from online reports.

“I was disappointed in myself, a reporter who goes to a show like this and
lets this one go by,” she said.

Marc Santora contributed reporting from New York, and Mia Li contributed
research from Beijing.