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MJ IMMORTAL shocks Beijing audience with Tiananmen 'tank man' image

mkgenie

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(CNN) -- A Cirque du Soleil performance left a Beijing audience audibly shocked when a banned image of the iconic Tiananmen "tank man" protester was displayed on giant screens in front of 15,000 people.


The politically-charged image -- of a sole, unarmed protester blocking a line of tanks during a 1989 government crackdown in Tiananmen Square -- was displayed for about four seconds as part of a montage of protest imagery during a performance of Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us," according to a post on That's Beijing magazine's website.


"The result was an audible collective gasp from the audience," wrote That's Beijing's editor, Stephen George, in a post which has since been deleted.


"The very fact it was displayed, so publicly and on such a large movie theater screen in front of so many people -- and in Beijing, of all places -- felt genuinely quite radical," he 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.'"
The image -- and any mention of the massacre itself -- is banned in China, raising questions of how it made it into the show past the attention of government censors.


Cirque du Soleil's publicist Laura Silverman said that "the image was removed immediately and is no longer shown" in the show, the South China Morning Post reported. It quoted her as saying the Canadian performance troupe had submitted the full show for prior approval by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, as visiting performers are required. "Our scheduled performances will go on as planned," she was quoted as saying.


The incident occurred during the first night of a three-night run of the troupe's Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour. Subsequent performances proceeded without the "tank man" image. The show continues its China run in Shanghai Friday, before moving to Hong Kong the following week.


The incident made barely a ripple on Chinese social media, although one user of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo service took offence at the image's inclusion. "Why can't you separate politics and art?" read the comment. "What would the Americans think if you put a photo of the collapsing World Trade Center in the show? Keep it out of the performance, stupid French Canadians!"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/world/asia/tank-man-cirque-soleil
 
Cirque du Soleil has removed a photo of the Tiananmen crackdown from its show in China after surprising an audience of 15,000 in Beijing with the iconic "tank man" image, which remains banned and highly controversial in the country.


The Canadian art troupe is currently on its Michael Jackson Immortal World Tour, celebrating the musical legacy of the US pop artist who died in 2009.


During its first performance at the MasterCard Center in Beijing last Friday, three large screens showed the Associated Press photo of an unarmed man, who temporarily stopped tanks near Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989.


The photo appeared for four seconds during Jackson's track They Don’t Care About Us and "within a montage sequence of civil-rights style protest movements, resulting in an audible collective gasp from the audience", according to a blogpost on That's Beijing, which has since been deleted.


The tour's publicist Laura Silverman said in an e-mailed statement that "the image was removed immediately and is no longer shown". "Our scheduled performances will go on as planned," she said.


On Thursday, the troupe is scheduled to perform its first of four performances in Shanghai, before heading to Hong Kong on Monday.


In what appears to be a blunder by Chinese censors, she said the art troupe had submitted the full show for approval as required by the Chinese Ministry of Culture.


“The Cirque du Soleil incident is just the latest in a line of embarrassing, high profile 'slips' the Chinese censors have made with respect to foreign performers and content,” said Robert Cain, from the entertainment consultancy Pacific Bridge.


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A photo of the show shared by a member of the audience. Photo: SCMP Pictures



“There are always instances where the censors' ax falls in a seemingly capricious and unpredictable manner,” he said. “But I haven't seen any evidence of a shift in the status quo.”


Cirque du Soleil is not the first foreign performer getting caught up with the ministry's strict regulations on what can and cannot be said on a stage in mainland China.


In 2011, US singer-songwriter Bob Dylan wrote in a rare statement he was not aware of any of his songs being censored during his tour of China. He chose not to perform political songs such as Hurricane and The Times They Are a-Changin' on tour.


Months ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, singer Björk, who enjoyed a huge fan base in China, embarrassed her official hosts by calling for Tibetan independence during a concert in Shanghai.


While official news media went silent, bulletin boards, the predecessors of microblogs, flared up. The Icelandic pop star has not performed in the country since.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insi...il-removes-tankman-michael-jackson-show-china
 
The reason there are no other social media comments is because all that stuff is banned on the internet. It would be taken down immediately and people could get in big trouble for talking about it.

I'm amazed at the censorship in China on the internet on many subjects. This is why YouTube and Facebook are not available there. In fact, if you Google the Dalai Lama in China no results are found. In this way the government controls the minds and opinions of the citizens, many of them actually believe that China has done something good by invading Tibet.
 
I disagree with the comment about Americans being bothered by an image of the World Trade Center collapsing. As a Michael Jackson fan if I saw a photo of it falling at the Immortal show I would just remember how he performed only the night before in NYC and he was still in the city.
 
ilmjj said:
I disagree with the comment about Americans being bothered by an image of the World Trade Center collapsing. As a Michael Jackson fan if I saw a photo of it falling at the Immortal show I would just remember how he performed only the night before in NYC and he was still in the city.
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The analogy between the two pics is a very bad one anyway.
 
It's true that the comment about the World Trade Centre shows a total lack of understanding about what this photo means for people. The World Trade Centre photos show damage done by an attack. This photo shows amazing courage of one individual. A major difference, as the second photo shows the power of the common man against forces that seem unstoppable.

Lark
 
This image is part of the they dont care about us video. that video exists since 1996. printed on millions of copies of video discs. an now they are complaining? stupid government. noone complaines when someone like gaga or lopez, or all the other nudes, jump nacked around in a video or on stages, scream "**** your self!" or "assholes" "ni**er", all that bad stuff. oh, but thats ok. ^^
 
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They have limited information. In many cases it isn't their fault, information is banned and not available to them. Imagine living in a country where the tabloid versions of events were all that existed? Everything is filtered through the government and therefore many times skewed.
Lark
 
China doesn't actually get everything we do ? MJ fans in China may not even be aware of the video with the Tiananmen Square tank man image because such a video would definitely not air there.
 
Lark0016 said:
In many cases it isn't their fault, information is banned and not available to them. Imagine living in a country where the tabloid versions of events were all that existed? Everything is filtered through the government and therefore many times skewed.
Lark
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Well, in many ways Western societies are brainwashed societies as well. Even if seemingly there is no censorship it's often very much one-sided and agenda-driven what is being reported in mainstream media. Just think of the alternative reality the media created about who Michael Jackson is and many people think that's who he is because that's all they see in the media... And this is just one example, but if they do this about Michael they surely do it about other subjects as well - including politics, economics etc.
 
respect77 said:
Well, in many ways Western societies are brainwashed societies as well. Even if seemingly there is no censorship it's often very much one-sided and agenda-driven what is being reported in mainstream media. Just think of the alternative reality the media created about who Michael Jackson is and many people think that's who he is because that's all they see in the media... And this is just one example, but if they do this about Michael they surely do it about other subjects as well - including politics, economics etc.
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This is my point exactly, only that in North America we are lucky these days because we have the internet where people can share their views and we can read them if we want to go looking for information. This is at least not cut off to us anymore, and this is recent. In some countries, like China, if you go looking for information you will still only find one perspective. This is a massively general statement, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Information is still far more accessible to us, even if not presented outright.

Lark
 
Lark0016 said:
This is my point exactly, only that in North America we are lucky these days because we have the internet where people can share their views and we can read them if we want to go looking for information. This is at least not cut off to us anymore, and this is recent. In some countries, like China, if you go looking for information you will still only find one perspective. This is a massively general statement, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Information is still far more accessible to us, even if not presented outright.

Lark
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Yes, for sure it's a tad better as for Westerners at least the opportunity is there. Even though most people will not dig deep for information and for checking out whether it's true what they are fed with. People want quick answers that can be presented in soundbites and headlines and they won't take time to vet the information. So eventually many Westerners end up just as brainwashed as Chinese. It's a bit of an Orwellian world IMO, and not only in China. But yeah, at least the opportunity is there for the few who care.
 
respect77 said:
Yes, for sure it's a tad better as for Westerners at least the opportunity is there. Even though most people will not dig deep for information and for checking out whether it's true what they are fed with. People want quick answers that can be presented in soundbites and headlines and they won't take time to vet the information. So eventually many Westerners end up just as brainwashed as Chinese. It's a bit of an Orwellian world IMO, and not only in China. But yeah, at least the opportunity is there for the few who care.
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On a positive note, I think that attitude of taking the news "as is" is quickly fading, especially for new generations. There is a lot more forced transparency since younger people get most of their news online, and not necessarily from news paper websites, but from varied sources often involving discussion. I think as time goes on, there will be major improvement with this problem as young people are growing up with much more awareness of media distortion with the help of social media.

Lark
 
This goverment in china need a big update in their politics. They have to see that in that country, to see whats wrong in their own country. thats the same when you look to the usa where they censore or block things that are the truth and the goverment dont want the people to see.
 
It seems to me that the mere fact that the audience gasped, means they KNOW about that incident even though pictures are banned. To me that image goes very well with the theme of They Don't Care About Us. If the censors did not say anything about removing it when Cirque presented them with the content of the show, then it seems they felt it was OK. However, I think Cirque did the right thing in removing it, since some people probably felt the image reminded them of a bad time in their history.

Sometimes these cultural differences can be difficult...
 
Petrarose said:
If the censors did not say anything about removing it when Cirque presented them with the content of the show, then it seems they felt it was OK. However, I think Cirque did the right thing in removing it, since some people probably felt the image reminded them of a bad time in their history.

Sometimes these cultural differences can be difficult...
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I don't think the censors felt it was OK. It's a very sensitive issue in China and that picture is banned. So if they did not censor it it was because somehow they missed it innitially. And if Cirque had not removed it they probably could not have performed the rest of their shows so they had to. It's banned beacuse of political reasons, not because it reminds people of "bad times".

I'm from Hungary, from a former Eastern Block country and during the communist regime any meaningful discussion was banned about the the 1956 revolution ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 ). They have not properly thought it in the school. If it was mentioned it was portrayed as some evil uprising as well as its leaders as criminals. Since the iron curtain went down and the political system changed the revolution's leaders are considered heroes and it is celebrated as one of the most meaningful events in our history. It's not like people didn't feel this way about it before or people didn't discuss it because it reminded of bad times. It was simply politically forced upon us not to discuss it - or at the very least not to sympathize with it.

From the Wiki article:

Public discussion about this revolution was suppressed in Hungary for more than 30 years. Since the thaw of the 1980s, it has been a subject of intense study and debate. At the inauguration of the Third Hungarian Republic in 1989, 23 October was declared a national holiday.
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Respect77, a lot of what you described in your country is very similar to what it is like in China. There are changes being made, but they are slow. They are taught in China that the Chinese way is the best and most virtuous, and so people may see this photo and be against it even though they are smart and their hearts are in the right place. They just don't have all the facts.
 
Respect I don't understand why the censors would miss something like that if they looked at it. Who would miss some big tanks like that. I know it was not banned because it reminds the people of bad times, but I am saying that when they saw it, it would remind them of that negative time in their history. Just the imagery of that made them feel very uncomfortable in spite of the banning. It is just like when I went to see the color purple in the cinema. When the scenes came on where the African-Americans were badly treated by White people, both white and African-American gasped and you could feel the tension in the cinema. Then one African American shouted out "you see that, you see that." So the imagery does bring up some uncomfortable feelings, and I think any Chinese person in the cinema would feel uneasy not only because of the banning, but due to what the imagery represents.
 
That is TDCAU though and surely if something like this comes to a country they'd get someone to check it out so things like this aren't in the show?
 
Petrarose said:
Respect I don't understand why the censors would miss something like that if they looked at it. Who would miss some big tanks like that. I know it was not banned because it reminds the people of bad times, but I am saying that when they saw it, it would remind them of that negative time in their history. Just the imagery of that made them feel very uncomfortable in spite of the banning. It is just like when I went to see the color purple in the cinema. When the scenes came on where the African-Americans were badly treated by White people, both white and African-American gasped and you could feel the tension in the cinema. Then one African American shouted out "you see that, you see that." So the imagery does bring up some uncomfortable feelings, and I think any Chinese person in the cinema would feel uneasy not only because of the banning, but due to what the imagery represents.
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I think you are probably right, some imagery is just very charged with meaning and emotions. The tank image is certainly one of them, both in China and world wide. On a side note, I was literally holding that book when I read your post! I am in love with the movie and am finally reading the book :heart:

But I also agree with Respect. I do not know first hand what it is like to be censored in that way, but I have family in China (both Chinese and Canadian living in China) and going to visit them taught me a lot about the vast differences like this. And yet, I have not even scratched the surface of all there is to know.

Lark
 
Lark ^^Yes. I agree with you too. The censoring does play a significant role. I am not saying it is not important, but that something like that does involve multiple points of reference in the eyes of the bolder--flashbacks for those who were alive when it happened, then the knowledge of the censoring, then the shame that this is going all over the world and other nations are seeing it, and all this is flashing through people's minds as they see it.

I don't have family in China but I associated with many while in graduate school, so I have some idea of what you mean about the differences. However, I must say that all countries have some very dark moments that they tend not to like to talk about, although the ideas may not be banned.

Dam it seems they gave it to the censors to look at, but Respect feels they missed it. I find that strange though. The way they are so detailed about things coming from the West, you would think the people watching the content would do their job carefully.
 
Makes me sad how they're aren't even legally allowed to talk about it. There are lessons in tragedies. Pretending that something inhumane didn't happen doesn't make traumatic incidents just go away.... :unsure:
 
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