from China global times state propaganda newspaper published a story promoting a Disney exhibit in Beijing on Monday in which the entertainment giant invited Communist Party-approved artists to reimagine Mickey Mouse in the context of “Chinese culture.”
The exhibition photos show pieces of art depicting Mickey Mouse with traditional Chinese red and gold art motifs, a Mickey Mouse taikonaut (Chinese astronaut), and a bizarre exhibit featuring walls of electronic screens playing dozens of images of Mickey Mouse, seemingly invoking the all-encompassing Chinese communist. surveillance status.
The exhibit is an expansion of a project that began in New York to celebrate 90 years since Mickey Mouse’s debut. In China, the project – titled “Mickey: The True Original & Ever Curious” – toured the cities of Shanghai, Chengdu and Shenzhen before landing in Beijing and is a joint project with an organization closely linked to the regime that identifies part of its mission such as promoting the Communist Party’s interpretation of Chinese culture. According to the global timesthe project is being “jointly maintained by Disney and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) Lab.”
UCCA Lab is a subsidiary of the UCCA Group, which describes itself as aiming to “bring China into global dialogue through contemporary art”. the art institution brags Chinese government accreditation and collaboration with the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau and officials in the once autonomous but now fully usurped Hong Kong government.
the global times covered the exhibition’s debut event in Beijing, where a Disney China official proudly stated that the project aimed to “combine Mickey and Chinese culture.” The state-run propaganda outlet emphasized the appearance of government-sanctioned “Chinese” reinterpretations of Mickey Mouse, implying that they made Beijing’s version of the show superior to those in the free world.
“In 2020 in Tokyo, the exhibition was further upgraded to what we see now. However, in addition to the significant works of art exhibited in Tokyo and New York, the Beijing exhibition will see 34 contemporary Chinese artists contribute their own new creations that present new definitions of Mickey,” said the global times informed.
Among the individual pieces of art in the exhibition that caught the attention of the state media are those mentioned taikonaut article and a piece that, “inspired by the Chinese people’s continuous exploration of time, space, and the universe from ancient times to the present…makes use of stones and mirrors to present a prototype of multidimensional space in Meteorite Mickey.”
Promotion of wedding services by Mickey Mouse at an annual exhibition of wedding services in Beijing. Chinese lovers preparing for marriage are now competing with each other for the most unusual wedding photos and ceremony designs, leading to an expanding wedding market. (Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The China Internet Information Center Portal (China.org.cn), another government propaganda outlet, similarly emphasized the regime-approved interpretation of Chinese art in the project.
“The exhibition design combines elements of modern urban life and traditional Chinese design, creating an immersive experience for visitors and guiding them to discover hidden spaces and surprises,” the Chinese regime site. reclaimed.
The Chinese.org site shared more photos of various artworks in the exhibition than the global times, including the apparent Mickey Mouse mass surveillance wall, titled “Tanzmaus-808”. The independent outlet Radii, which covers China, described the artwork during a 2021 visit to the Shanghai version of the Mickey Mouse exhibition as “audiovisual” noting that the images on the screen are accompanied by “face-melting electronic music.” He described the exhibition in general as “a nightmare”.
The exhibit is an expansion of what has become a very lucrative business for Disney with the Communist Party, which continues despite the long list of human rights atrocities the Party is currently committing. In addition to disappearing, torturing, imprisoning, and persecuting political dissidents, the extensive evidence compiled by human rights investigators has tried that the Communist Party is currently engaged in genocide against Muslim ethnic minorities in eastern Turkistan, in particular the predominant Uyghur group in the region. Eyewitness reports and leaked documents show the widespread use of sterilization and slavery to limit and suppress the Uyghur population.
Disney filmed its 2020 live-action remake of mulanwhich failed in China, in East Turkistan and, instead of taking the opportunity to raise awareness of genocide, thanked to the repressive police forces of the region for their help in the filming of the film during the closing credits. However, Chinese state media condemned the film as insufficiently “patriotic.”
Disney as a corporate entity has not taken a public stance against the Uyghur genocide and continued font goods from China, despite experts saying China’s cotton products are likely to be contaminated by slave labor by Uyghurs, in May this year. On June 21, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect in the United States, prohibiting imports from eastern Turkistan unless the importer can prove that the imports were not produced by slaves.
In contrast to its cozy relationship with China, Disney Announced in March it would suspend its much less lucrative business in Russia in response to Moscow’s escalation of an existing eight-year occupation of neighboring Ukraine. Disney had not made any significant trade moves against Russia before March despite the fact that leader Vladimir Putin invaded and colonized the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014.