The China Thread

[Tamas]

Those children jumping in "joy" and waving on queue seems so dystopian for me: https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1790995759313142095?t=Xqa8Pv_IjXqiSxFf3MrDQw&s=19

[Josquius]

It does indeed with the whole vibe around it.
Though to be fair its perfectly imaginable a group of western school kids could have been trained to do some silly little performance for prominent visitors. In democratic-Asia even more so.

[Tamas]

It does indeed with the whole vibe around it.
Though to be fair its perfectly imaginable a group of western school kids could have been trained to do some silly little performance for prominent visitors. In democratic-Asia even more so.

Yeah but the fact that we don't do it is sort of the point. The current bastards in power in Hungary do the light version of this, regularly using kindergarten-age children as passive props but that's just evidence of where they are leaning culturally.

And this particular performance is especially horrible.

[Josquius]

Im sure I can remember circumstances where democracies did use performing kids like so.

Anyway. Didn't notice from clip but have read since it was a big snub for Putin with some random nobody being the one to meet him when convention would be Xi or at least his second in command.

[Sheilbh]

Im sure I can remember circumstances where democracies did use performing kids like so.

With mixed results:


Or Sunak's coke addict admission

[Jacob]

I don't think "kids waving flags" is inherently a totalitarian aesthetic. You'll see it with royal birthdays and visits and whatnot.

I think other things around it can make it more or less totalitarian feeling, of course - mostly staging and context.