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| Icons of Revolution |
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| Culture | |
| Thursday, 01 May 2008 | |
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The Cultural Revolution in China took place in the years 1966-76, though the display features ephemera from as early as the 1900s. It charts the progress of the imagery from the stirringly emblematic and ideological to the sartorially dismissive and satirically lampooning attitude of the present-day. Mao's image continues to play an important role in the Chinese landscape, but today, it is spectral and haunting in quality. His portrait still occupies pride of place in Tian'anmen Square, his face is still printed upon the red 100-yuan notes. In a cruelly ironic twist, it is more commonly encountered in 2008 as various manifestations of pop culture, in advertising and marketing. When I myself was in China, souvenir shops were populated most densely by Mao-printed bags, t-shirts and red-star patches. Not a single backpacker was to be found without some revolutionary token pinned to his torso. These ‘icons' have been wholly reclaimed by the energetically entrepreneurial spirit evident upon every street corner, hammering the final nails in the coffin of China's communist past. One of the most subversive items on display is an enamel mug which reworks the slogan ‘Increase and vigilance, defend the homeland' into ‘Increase and vigilance, defend the stock market'. In truth, the display presents us with two revolutions: first, the accepted revolution of the CPC and second, that of the individual and of free speech. It is the latter which captures the authentic spirit of the term - it suggests the overthrow of top-heavy tyranny, of an impersonal social order in favour of the solitary speaking voice. Despite this, I could not help but feel that a certain hollowness surrounded both enterprises. In Mao's case, the question arises: ‘after the revolution, what next?' A cause which derives its identity from the struggle to overthrow a dominant system cannot, by very definition, ever achieve its aim. The demand to ‘strive for victory' and to ‘surmount every difficulty' (1945) cannot ever be met. What, then, of our second enterprise - the rebirth of the ‘individual' apparently demonstrated by the capitalist revolution of present-day China? Again the revolution is a void. The satire itself articulates the emptiness of the ruthless pursuit of capital. We know it all too well in the West: quite simply, one can never be rich enough. I learned several interesting facts about Chinese traditional symbolism in the display; namely, that the pine signifies ‘long life', the plum ‘survival in adversity'. Consequently we find such imagery abounds, as naturally do the red suns, red hearts, the hammers and sickles. The ‘ears of grain' represent farmers and agriculture, the ‘cogwheel' the workers and industry. Again the latter strikes me as ironic: for how could it have been thought that to function as ‘cogwheel', as but a unit within some larger machine, could ever coincide with one's liberation? The revival of Mao iconography coincides with growing consumerism in China, which is the final point of the show. ‘Red tours,' which ferry tourists around ‘revolutionary sacred sites,' apparently abound in popularity. Nostalgia, it seems, for the collectivism of yore, for the notions of social sacrifice, of unity and of the ‘greater good' which epitomised the core tenets of the ‘lost' revolution. I myself possess my own collection of Mao iconography, or, more precisely, of Mao badges. Stuffed into a brown envelope which is heavily worn, collected from various antique and flea markets on several visits to China, they are made of plastic, embedded with dirt and garishly gold, red and even neon-pink in colour. They are like toys - nothing like the iron-cast badges shown at The British Museum. Reduced to the ridiculous, these ‘icons' are now only the plaything of some Western girl, a girl whose intent at the time of collection was but to accessorize herself with some emblems of ‘rebellion'. This is the ‘whimper' of which I initially spoke, this is the sadness. Mao's crumbling values have been transformed into their very opposite. Whilst not sanctioning old party regime, one cannot help but respond with pity. Mao has...lost his face. |
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Icons of Revolution, such a strong title for an exhibition of Mao paraphernalia currently
on display at the British Museum, but it does not quite add up. The fact that
merely finding the display requires a feat of patience and persistence signals
the sad demise of the grandiose edifice once occupied by the Communist Party in
China. The girl at the ‘Information Desk' had not even realised that this
exhibition was on and I encountered not a single signpost upon my circuitous
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