The Ogre strikes again

I went to a rock concert on Monday - a pretty major cultural event here in Bejing, the highly influential (though not my scene!) and boundary-pushing New York indie 'noise' band Sonic Youth, who are widely cited as a primary musical influence by up-and-coming local bands. One of these, the strangely named Carsick Cars (I doubt if it sounds any better in Chinese; almost nothing sounds better in Chinese), led by a highly inventive young guitarist called Jeff Zhang, was to have opened the show.

But they didn't. Their 'permit' to perform was suddenly revoked, only 8 or 10 hours before they were due to go on stage. I'm not sure which of the many inept departments of government is responsible for supervising this portion of the entertainment industry. I think it might well be SARFT (yes, rhymes with DAFT - rather appropriate), the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (and telecoms and the Internet and....). Why would they do such a thing? Why indeed.

Well, it might be because one of Jeff's songs is called Zhongnanhai. I don't think I've heard that one myself, but I read recently that it has started becoming quite popular on the local music circuit and is being covered by a number of other bands in live shows. Zhongnanhai (Central Lake/South Lake) is the parkland residential compound in the middle of the city (immediately to the west of the old Forbidden City) for senior members of the national government, so it's possible that this piece is sailing a bit close to the wind in terms of political commentary. Then again, it's also the name of a popular brand of cigarette; so the song might be completely innocent of such subversive intent, for all I know.

However, it is very much 'the Chinese way' to wield one's powers of interference and obstruction in this manner merely to remind people that one can. The sub-text to almost every public action or pronouncement of the government here is the (increasingly desperate and hollow-sounding) assertion: "We're still in charge, we're still in charge."

Whether there was any plausible pretext or not, it is another huge PR goof for the Chinese Communist Party. The several hundred people at the gig on Monday (mostly but not all foreigners) now think the CCP are a bunch of tits. They probably did anyway, but they now believe it with heightened vehemence - for a few days, at least. Sonic Youth now know - and might not have before - that the CCP are a bunch of tits. And the music press all around the world are likely to write up what a bunch of tits they are, for the enlightenment of the previously naive or uninformed music-loving masses.

I was reminded (and not by any means for the first time since I came to this country) of W.H. Auden's bitter little satire on Brezhnev's invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer of '68.

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.

About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.