Former President Bill Clinton's recent trip to North Korea prompted Wall Street Journal Arts and Leisure features editor Eric Gibson to write an interesting article on "totalitarian kitsch," which he defines as "where art's sole raison d'etre is to bolster a dictatorial regime and glorify its leader." In North Korea's case, the flamboyant seascape in the background of an official photograph of Kim Jong Il and Bill Clinton gives rise to Gibson's meditation on art in totalitarian states.
Gibson also mentions the afterimages of totalitarianism -- the ways that in post-totalitarian societies like today's Russia, "what constitutes the public face of leadership would inevitably have been shaped by the tropes of totalitarian kitsch." (He cites the recent photographs of Vladmir Putin in shirtless poses reinforcing a cult of personality.) While Gibson briefly mentions art in Mao's China as an example, my own recent experience living in China allowed me to observe multiple cultural vectors that have emerged there after the end of Mao's totalitarian rule -- and it's a fascinating and complex picture. Here are some snapshots, with no pretense of being comprehensive:
--No current Communist Party leader in China commands a personality cult anything like Chairman Mao's or the epic model that Vladmir Putin is apparently following. During Mao time, the propaganda machine produced likenesses of the Chairman that could be found in every Chinese home. Perfect illustrations of "totalitarian kitsch" abounded, all testifying to Mao's near deification. Some Mao-era grandiosities remain visible, like the décor of the Great Hall of the People, China's parliament building, from which state photographs resembling the recent North Korean exemplar still emerge. But there is no personality cult around China's current President Hu Jintao (and the thought of his being photographed swimming bare-chested is unimaginable).
Indeed, he and Premier Wen Jiabao seem to have realized that his government must actively move beyond the conventional behavior of totalitarianism. Often, commentators say that the legitimacy of China's leaders today depends on the performance of China's economy -- which is largely true. But it appears that Wen and some others are realizing that establishing a more direct connection with the people (at least, with the Han majority) would serve them well. This was most clearly on display during Wen's strong show of sympathy in the wake of last year's disastrous earthquake in Sichuan province, which led the Economist to write, "Mr Wen has shown some of the public-relations flair of Western politicians." Wen's evolution may signal that, politically, "totalitarian kitsch" is on its way to becoming passé in China.
--One reason that such showiness may have less currency in China today is globalization: people's yardsticks have been rescaled according to a world where every leader must match up against the most charismatic individuals all over the globe. The accessibility of information has led to deflation; deification has become reification. It's no coincidence that Gibson's example of the kitsch aesthetic comes from North Korea, the most closed society in the world.
--A young Chinese friend once told me over dinner that he and his friends have no real idols, elaborating that there are no figures they view as purely heroic and inspirational. The closest to that measure, he said, are Barack Obama, the pop star Jay Chou, and, for the country's numerous nerds, Steve Jobs (in the same way that a slightly older crowd regarded Bill Gates). This phenomenon reflects globalization, to be sure -- but it also may indicate a kind of cultural aversion to creating domestic icons, the result perhaps of a bad taste left by Mao's cult of personality, which unleashed many destructive forces and made self-correction difficult.
Also, the uncanny obsession of many young Chinese with sports stars like Kobe Bryant, which prompted the Los Angeles Times to write "Kobe Bryant rules China," may be one way in which Chinese society is still fixating on "superhuman" or "larger-than-life" individuals, and the cardboard cutouts and NBA memorabilia certainly seem kitschy -- but this is global capitalist kitsch.
--Many Chinese are acutely aware of the downsides of, if not slightly embarrassed by, the worship of Chairman Mao that defined much of the history of the People's Republic. Textbooks are continuing to downplay his historical role. But in a society that is searching for a suitable set of values, neo-Maoism offers some appeal and is making an appearance, alongside a youth-driven nationalism. Yet the Party has taken a fairly negative view of the phenomenon, according to reports.
--Much of the best art to come out of China in the past 20 years has seemed targeted at breaking down whatever aesthetic of totalitarian kitsch remains in the Chinese mind. For example, many of the greatest achievements of China's fifth and sixth generation directors (from Zhang Yimou's To Live to Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle and Jia Zhangke's Platform) have often been frankly naturalistic, telling small, authentic stories of families or non-epic individuals.
In the visual arts, many of the most memorable styles do seem to focus on de-individuating individuals, whether we take Yue Minjun's countless self-images frozen in grotesquely exaggerated laughter or Zhang Xiaogang's monochrome, monotonous portraits. This may reflect the same trend as described above, albeit in a more surreal form: a powerful artistic effort to tear down a held-over cultural reliance on cults of individuals, although the very vivid sameness and repetitiveness of the painted figures may indicate a strong cultural memory of Mao's once omnipresent visage.
--That said, the stunning opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics had many of the characteristics, even if not the exact iconography, of what Gibson described as "totalitarian kitsch": grandiose imagery marshaled by the state for political purposes. So kitsch may not quite be out the door. Indeed, a fascinating figure here is Zhang Yimou, who, as I said above, was a cinematic leader in escaping the artistic forms of the Mao period. But he was the director of the Olympic opening ceremony; he has also come under some criticism in China for his recent films, gaudy pageants like Curse of the Golden Flower -- both of which indicate the complex crosscurrents of spectacle and taste in a society that is still emerging from an era dominated by Mao.
--What does all of this leave us with? A picture of a China that is full of contradictions and conflicting trends, of liberalizing desire to become an open society mixed with a strong strain of conservative attachment, of kitsch and real splendor existing side-by-side -- all of which, I have to say, sounds about right.