Ads that I like: # 118

This little ripper of an ad emerged out of China just as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was kicking off. I suspect that the artist might have had an idea what an angry mob baying for blood might have looked like.

The tagline for this campaign is the snappy Resolutely support the American people in their resistance against American imperialist aggression in Vietnam. I especially like how the artist has managed slip in what I expect were a multitude of ‘gags’ to impress his friend.

For example, what is Leon Trotsky doing there? In fact, I believe that they have gone with Trotsky as the primary model, and hilariously fused in Stalin’s brow as an unsubtle pop to their Internationalist cousins.

And what is with that angry French sailor (I expect he’s from Martinique)? I know that Red China was pretty much a closed state, but those Anglo features and African skin tones really do clash with the Gallic shirt…

Added props must also be awarded for sneaking in that Ukrainian kulak on the extreme left (note the irony there).

Honestly, could there possibly have ever been a scene in the whole of the United States that even remotely resembled this gathering in 1966?

Comments

Roddy said…

My god, you do some homework when you dismantle a pamphlet.
What a mismatch of society from 1966. I guess this could only happen in the enlightened era of Chinese conscientiousness.
Sixty six. I couldn't even see black and white together. Unless they were asking for trouble.

5 October 2010 at 17:13

Pasadena Adjacent said…

You haven't been to Los Angeles have you?

very funny (and now I know what a kulak is)

6 October 2010 at 02:23

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, I didn't even mention the angry Michael Douglas-lookalike from Falling Down...

PA, no I haven't. The poor Kulaks. Stalin didn't like them very much.

6 October 2010 at 09:59

Roddy said…

Where, where?

6 October 2010 at 14:49

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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