Once again, I have to give props to the North Koreans.  Kim Jong “License to” Il and friends may represent the worst dictatorship in the world, but when it comes to propaganda, few can rival them.  We’ve already taken a look at their propaganda posters; today, we’ll look at their mass display card rallies.

If you thought the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics were scarily impressive, wait until you see what the North Koreans can do.  There’s a reason Chinese director Zhang Yimou mindlessly worships their precision.  The only problem, of course, is that it comes at a small cost:  a destroyed country, mass starvation, torture, cruelty, and a bats**t crazy supreme leader.

A few weeks ago, I ran across the work of freelance photographer Eric Lafforgue, who recently traveled to North Korea to document conditions there.  Eric has kindly allowed me to reproduce some of his work here.  Please keep in mind, however, that all these photos are ©Eric Lafforgue, and should not be reproduced without his permission.

The following photos all examples of something called “mass games” or “mass gymnastics.”  From Wikipedia:

Mass games or mass gymnastics are a form of performing arts or gymnastics in which large numbers of performers take part in a highly regimented performance that emphasizes group dynamics rather than individual prowess. Because of the vast scale of the performance, with often tens of thousands of performers, mass games are performed in stadiums, often accompanied by a background of card-turners occupying the seats on the opposite side from the viewers. Mass games are typically used to emphasize themes of political propaganda. . . .

Today, mass games are regularly performed only in North Korea, where they take place to celebrate national holidays such as the birthdays of rulers Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. In recent years, they have been the main attraction of the Arirang Festival in Pyongyang.

The following images are from this year’s Ariang Festival, which took place on September 12, 2008.  Keep in mind that those little black dots in each photo are actually the kids’ heads.

Eric:  “Food crisis?  What food crisis?”

Eric: “Legend says that Kim Il Sung, using the two pistols inherited from his father, founded the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army (AJPGA), the first of its kind in Korean history, in April Juche 21 (1932). So if you visit North Korea, you will see many images of these two pistols.”

Eric:  “The photo shows 100,000 people performing a choreographed dancing and gymnastics routine on the pitch of Pyongyang’s May Day stadium.  In the background, 20,000 performers flip colored cards to form detailed pictures. . . .This picture is supposed to be Pyongyang at night, which is funny because Pyongyang at night is dark.”

Thanks once again to Eric for giving me permission to reproduce his amazing photos.  Please remember that all photos are ©Eric Lafforgue.  Be sure to check out Eric’s entire photostream — it’s pretty remarkable.  You can find the North Korea photos here.

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Recently, there have been a number of media reports that tyrannical megalomaniac Dear Leader Kim Jong “Licensed to” Il is sick.  He hasn’t been seen in public for nearly three weeks, and according to some sources he is suffering from both diabetes and heart disease.

I have some good news and some bad news for all you North Korea groupies out there.

The good news is that Kim isn’t sick.

The bad news is that he’s dead.

Or at least that’s what one political scientist thinks:

[A] book by Japan’s Professor Toshimitsu Shigemura at Japan’s respected Waseda University says Kim died in the autumn of 2003 and a series of stand-ins have since taken his place at official state event.  Prof. Shigemura says Kim was not seen in public for the 42 days after September 10, 2003, and in his book “The True Character of Kim Jong Il” claims the man that North Koreans refer to as the “Dear Leader” died of diabetes. . . .

[In August 2003], suddenly, Kim disappeared, says Shigemura, and there was chaos in the upper echelons of the country’s leadership. . . .After Kim’s death, a group of four very senior officials in the regime decided to protect their own positions by making the stand-in more permanent. Whenever anyone meets the North Korean leader, Shigemura says one of the four is alongside him “like a puppet-master.”

This is going to screw up my Axis of Evil fantasy league.

Maybe we should start calling him Dearly Departed Leader.  Or Kim Jong Nil.

Image:  Wikipedia, in the public domain.

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Okay, not technically photoshop, but its Darwinian ancestor:  the propaganda poster.

You gotta love the North Koreans.  They’re not only the kings of robotic precision and the heroes of Zhang Yimou, but also gold medalists in over-the-top cheesy propaganda.  You just don’t find many good agitprop posters anymore, so I appreciate their careful conservation of the art form.

The California Literary Review has put together a small collection of some of the best worst examples.

My initial reaction?  I wouldn’t want the drugs these guys are taking.

“Let’s Drive Out the Imperialists and Reunite the Fatherland!”

(Note the cross on one soldier and Nazi-era cap on the other.)

“Wicked Man”

(Sounds like the name of a good Warren Zevon tune.)

“Let’s extensively raise goats in all families!”

(Really.  Trust me.  I mean why would I photoshop a goat?)

“Though the dog barks, the procession moves on!”

(Sounds like a Zen koan, not North Korean propaganda.)

“When provoking a war of aggression, we will hit back, beginning with the US!”

(Winner of the Noam Chomsky prize for 9/11 sensitivity.)

And now my favorite.  I’m thinking of using it for my screen-saver:

“Do not forget the US imperialist wolves!”

Ah yes, the ol’ dropping the baby down the well trope.  Talk about an overused propaganda cliché — the British had German soldiers dropping babies down wells over ninety years ago.  Come on, Kim Jong “Licensed to” Il, you don’t need to borrow from imperialist propaganda to remain on top!

I do have one question, though.  How did they get Telly Savalas to pose for the painting?  The soldier looks like Telly in The Dirty Dozen, down to the half crazed look.  Think I’m kidding?  Just take a look:

One other bit of art criticism:  if you’re going to drop a baby down the well, wouldn’t it make more sense to point your machine gun at the baby?

Hat tip:  Passport

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We’re taking one last look back at the most discussed — and controversial — Olympics since Berlin 1936. Previously, we looked at the winners and the losers.  Now let’s take a look at winners who in fact lost.

1.  Chinese women’s gymnastics team — nobody believes they were all sixteen years old.  Not even the Chinese.  They may have won gold, and the Chinese may have avoided a scandal as a result of forged documents, but the reality is that sooner or later, someone will talk.

2.  Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh — the American bikini-clad, gold medal-winning women’s beach volleyball team may have been the ugliest winners in the entire Olympics.  And May-Treanor’s “slap my butt” antics with President Bush set back both the sport and America’s image.

3. Russia — Russian athletes came in third in terms of total number of medals won.  After the invasion of Georgia, however, nobody wanted them to win anything.  And at one point in the Games, Georgia had as many gold medals as Russia.  In addition, Russia’s hosting of the winter games at Sochi in 2014 may be at risk, given their location only fifteen miles from the Russia-Georgia border.

4.  Zhang Yimou — the director of the the Opening and Closing ceremonies actually praised the “precision” of North Korean performers and dissed the New York Metropolitan Opera as whiners.  He also ignored his own history — as a victim of the Cultural Revolution — to suck up to the Chinese leadership and produce massive extravaganzas without any consideration of the resultant human cost.

5.  London 2012 — they may have the next games, but they have to follow what was (setting aside, for the moment, human rights abuses and other problems) the best-organized Games ever.  And the London contribution to the Closing Ceremonies was beyond bad.

Next up:  the medal winners in the Schadenfreude competition.

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Zhang Yimou, the General Director of the Opening Ceremony, gave a long interview with Southern Weekend.  China Digital Times was kind enough to provide a translation.

Most Americans have never heard of Zhang, but he was an internationally acclaimed film director long before he got the Olympics gig.  Three of his films have been nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, and he’s won several honors at the Cannes Film Festival.

He’s also not unfamiliar with the ravages of totalitarianism.  During the Cultural Revolution, he had to spend seven years as a manual laborer, and at first was denied entry to film school because he was too old.  He only managed to get in by convincing authorities that he should not be penalized for his time “in the countryside,” as victims of the Cultural Revolution often call it.  In 1991, one of his films, Raise the Red Lantern,  was initally banned in China because authorities feared it was an allegory of Communist rule.

So you would think he would be sensitive to human rights.

Then again, maybe not:

I felt that we had two things added together, one plus one, that made such an impact. The first one is a human performance. I often joke with [foreign journalists] and say that our human performance is number two in the world. Number one is North Korea. Their performances can be so uniform! This kind of uniformity brings beauty. We Chinese can do it too. After hard training and strict discipline, Chinese achieved that as well. Like the moveble type cubes, they follow orders. . . .

I have conducted operas in the West. It was so troublesome. They only work four and a half days each week. Everyday there are two coffee breaks. There cannot be any discomfort, because of human rights. This can really worry me to death. Wow, one week, I thought I should have rehearsed it very smoothly already, but they could not even stand in straight lines yet. You could not criticize them either. They all belong to some organizations. ….they have all kind of institutions, unions. We do not have that. We can work very hard, can withstand lots of bitterness. We can achieve in one week what they can achieve in one month. Therefore our actors can give such a high quality performance. I think other than North Korea, no other country can achieve this in the world.

The second is our ideas and use of technology. The technology used very fresh ideas and really outstanding concepts. It is very hard to have both. They may have the technology and ideas, but they cannot have the same level of human performance. North Korea can have the same level of human performance, but their ideas are really backward, very sixties. So if you think about it, I feel that only China can have both. I am not kidding.

These foreigners who really understand, they saw our quality of performance, and they really believe that they cannot produce it. Even if his ideas and technology can make it, but his human performance cannot produce it to this level.

China:  combining the technology of the west with the mindless repression of North Korea!  Two, two, two great tastes in one!

Would it just be crazy-stupid human rights talk to call this guy a total schmuck? Oh wait, before I do, I need to take another coffee break.  Maybe I’ll be lucky and it will worry him to death.

Congratulations, Comrade Zhang.

Not only are you the hero of the Opening Ceremonies, you’re also our latest Dillweed of the Day.

Photo:  the wax version of Zhang Yimou from Madame Tussaud’s in Shanghai.  Photo by Klaith Zhang via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.

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