Killer Chic: Hollywood's Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara
Nick Gillespie | December 11, 2008, 7:00am
Gisele Bundchen wears him on the runway, Johnny Depp wears him around his neck, and Benicio Del Toro becomes him in the new, highly acclaimed, two-part epic film from Steven Soderbergh, Che. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the revolutionary who helped found communist Cuba, is the celebrity that celebrities adore. And be it Madonna, Rage Against the Machine, or Jay-Z, musicians really dig Che.
It's something that baffles Cuban jazz legend Paquito D'Rivera. "Che hated artists, so how is it possible that artists still today support the image of Che Guevara?" Turns out the rebellious icon that emblazons countless T-shirts actually enforced aesthetic and political conformity. D'Rivera explains that Che and other Cuban authorities sought to ban rock and roll and jazz.
"Che was an inspiration for me," D'Rivera tells reason.tv. "I thought I have to get out of this island as soon as I can, because I am in the wrong place at the wrong time!" D'Rivera did escape Cuba, and so far he's won nine Grammy awards playing the kind of music Che tried to silence. But D'Rivera says Che's crimes didn't end with censorship. "He ordered the execution of many people with no trial." Che served as Castro's chief executioner, presiding over the infamous La Cabana prison. D'Rivera says Che's policy of killing innocents earned him the nickname-the Butcher of La Cabana.
"We're rightly horrified by fascist murderers like Adolph Hitler," says reason.tv's Nick Gillespie. "Why aren't we also horrified by communist killers?" Certainly, Che's body count isn't anywhere near Hitler's. But what about someone Che idolized, someone whom he might have liked to wear on his chest?
"Che, Castro, all the communist regimes idolized only one thing that Mao personifies—violence." Kai Chen grew up in China under the reign of Mao Zedong. Although he won gold medals for China's national basketball team, Chen's was far from the celebrity life of an NBA star. Says Chen, "You have no right to talk, and you have no right to think."
The punishment for questioning Mao's authority was often death. The Black Book of Communism estimates that Mao is responsible for the deaths of 65 million people—a figure that dwarfs even Hitler's body count. "Mao is a murderer," says Chen. "The biggest mass murderer in human history."
And yet, like Che, Mao's image is becoming an increasingly popular way to move merchandise. You can buy Mao t-shirts, mugs, caps-you name it. Near Chen's Los Angeles home there's even a restaurant called Mao's Kitchen. "Can you imagine a restaurant called Hitler's Kitchen?" asks Gillespie.
Neither D'Rivera nor Chen understands why communist killers are considered Chic, but each finds his own way to have the last laugh on these anti-capitalist icons.
"Killer Chic" is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Director of Photography is Alex Manning.
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John LENIN | December 11, 2008, 11:02am | #
To me Che Guevara is one of the most heroic figures in world history who is a stoic example of what all those who speak of “revolution” should espouse to be.
This was a man who left a bourgeoisie comfortable life of the upper class, a potential well compensated career as a medical doctor, and a high regarded governmental position --- each time to slog through the jungle and fight guerrilla wars against impenetrable odds = for a better and more equitable society.
I find his life not only fascinating but deeply inspiring.
Guevara despite his crippling and acute asthma which would debilitate him almost daily to inches from death, directed “suicide squads” in the battle against the U.S. armed and backed Dictator Batista where with less than 300 men; he literally took on 10,000 Batista soldiers armed with tanks, jets, and U.S. weaponry, and came out victorious at and leading up to the victory at Santa Clara.
In Bolivia, Guevara spent almost over 1 hellish year in the festering jungle battling a disease which left his hands as mounds of swollen flesh, the fact that his allergic reaction to mosquito bites would leave walnut sized welts all over his body, kept fighting even when he was without food for nearly a month, went shoeless, without blankets, and STILL with less than 30 men took on a force of 1,800 Bolivian U.S. armed rangers with an air force, green beret advisors, and CIA technology. Despite these odds Guevara’s men killed 30 Bolivian troops before they even lost their first Guerrilla. Moreover, displaying his character, despite all these hardships, when Guevara could have simply taken the food of Bolivian campesinos to eat, he insisted on paying for everything.
Throughout his life Che tended to thousands of sick campesinos, helped construct dozens of schools throughout Cuba, worked in a Leper colony to helped those afflicted, and even when he was literally tied up in a small mud school house awaiting his own execution ! , still complained to the local teacher that in a nation where the leaders drove Mercedes … it was a travesty that the peasants were taught in a dilapidated place like he was in.
Although I don’t believe in religious dogma (neither did Che), and view myself as an atheist, I do find it telling that the person Che was so often compared to by those who knew him was Jesus Christ. Because of his implacable character, unbending morals, and innate desire to fight in favor of the afflicted, I think that those who knew him were left with no other figure to compare him to.
Was he perfect? Of course not. No human is. But in mind he was awfully close considering the circumstances and cards he was dealt. I also find it telling that the best “canard” his detractors and those propagandists of monopoly capitalism can come up with - was his short stint at La Cabana prison. Where Che simply reviewed the cases and convictions of war criminals convicted by revolutionary tribunal (modeled after Nuremburg). The same secret police and Batista backed torturers that killed 20,000 people and tortured tens of thousands more. The fact that Che saw to it that justice was delivered cold to the Cuban people to me only makes him more heroic. He knew that a “pedagogy of the wall” was the only thing that could cleanse a society from the thousands of goons who raped and terrorized it with impunity.
Yet I'm amazed how people apply some sort of “perfectionist” fallacy to Guevara or more foolishly overlook his heroism on the basis of the fact that Capitalists profit from his defiant image. This is exactly what the capitalist vampires want. They will take every hero of the toilers and the left and revise them into "terrorists" … they will take every noble guerrilla who fought against imperialism and craft them into "mad men" so as to make you think that heroism and socialism/Marxism etc are antithetical concepts. If this doesn’t work … the Capitalist/Imperialists will try to make real heroes into caricatures, or “de-fanged” banal symbols of popular culture – so as to “devalue” their serious and conceptual analysis on behalf of the working class. Thus Che dawns a bikini, Mao dawns a purse, and Lenin dawns your Zippo lighter.
I would implore those who give credence to the idea of a "revolution" … to give much deserved recognition to one of the few men in the past century who literally threw aside “the arm chair” and went out to (imperfectly) create it.
If the world had 100 Che’s … or hell even 10 … we would be in much better shape.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre !Les | December 11, 2008, 2:35pm | #
From a good interview with Soderberg, whose work I love and admire, though I'll probably skip this one:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/39403
Capone: Have you given any thought to what Che would think of a movie like this?
SS: I think he’d hate it. Well, I don’t think he liked movies. I mean, the only reference in all of his writings that I could find to movies is literally a sentence where he says, “Children’s stories, novels, and movies are ways in which the imperialists sell their propaganda.” I don’t think he had much use for art, period.
Capone: I never got a sense he had much place for artists in his revolution either.
SS: No, there’s another line from that same essay, “Man and Socialism in Cuba,” where he says, “There is no great artist who is also a great revolutionary.” So, yeah, I don’t exist in the society that he is going to create, which is what’s funny to me, when people think that I must believe everything that he believes to make a movie about him.
Well, first of all, I wouldn’t be walking the red carpet at Cannes, if I believed a twentieth of what he believes. And, secondly, literally, I have no job, you know. He feels that’s all a waste of money. You could be buying books for kids with that money, and maybe he’s right.
MaterialMonkee | December 11, 2008, 2:52pm | #
If you volunteer to join the military, and the military has a law that says "No desertion during wartime, lest ye be shot", you are volunteering to be subject to that law for a set number of years. Ergo, if you desert, you are subject to that punishment, by your own volition and free will.
This is indeed what happens
but it's utterly Authoritarian
voluntary means
done, given, or acting of one’s own free will
that would be without coercion, this is infact at the heart of libertarian thought
Indeed the system with most statist armies specifies punishment for desertion but this is by its own nature aganist the most fundamental principles of libertarianism
However to further the point we were talking about volunteer armies in a revolutionary context such as the Spanish Civil War or the Cuban Revolution in which no contract or legal document would have be signed. Indeed George Orwell volunteered for such a group fighting for the Spanish republic, as is detailed in the book homage to Catalunia he was so disgusted by the behaviour and brutality of the Anarchists and communists that he uped sticks and left. What you would refer to as desertion. What you are insinuating is that George Orwell should have been shot (and we never would have had one of the greatest anti-authoritarain parables ever written).
Even in the event that you are an authoritarian and you accept desertion laws Che Guevarra had no legal document stating that his army could not desert. That makes him a murdering authoritarian fuck,
no different to the sum who ordered deserters shot during WW1.
jg | December 11, 2008, 3:34pm | #
Egosumabbas: "I accept that Che was a complex person. He idealized a communist utopia, and wanted 'help' the poor. He was also a murderous asshole. Don't forget that."
"Murderous asshole" trumps all. While I typically find your comments well-founded, everything else in the above quote is extraneous and irrelevant.
How sad to listen to the apologists of Che.
Truly.
And how sad that any individual requires any hero-figure.
A governor, a rock guitarist, an actor (that's the one that takes the cake -- a person who makes a living by reading lines that someone else wrote for them, and for that they are equipped to testify before Congress on policy suggestions), a ballplayer, a President.....
Most people would step aside to let them proceed ahead of them in the ticket line. Pitiful.
I sometimes think there is no hope for this world.
Anyway, "murderous asshole" is all that needs to be written. Any further time spent on his scum-ridden life and twisted brain is an affront to all those who pursued a model of kindness and fairness and peace.
Anybody that will spend one moment, even one, to rationalize that pig's behavior is a slave. A pathetic slave. Che would have liked those folks.
Whether or not he would order their execution, or their kids, would be a decision based on the benefit of "the people." Whatever that means.
jg | December 11, 2008, 4:53pm | #
"The Jewish resisters were fighting the same kind of scum that Che represents..."
"So does that mean Batista and his death toll of 20,000 killed in his dungeons was Gandhi ?"
No, it means that Batista was scum.
"Since you mentioned Israel - how about Irgun ? Guess which Irgun'terrorist' went on to lead Israel? How about the 'Butcher of the King David Hotel' then?"
If Begin was guilty of this, then he was scum.
"Everyone's hands has blood on it."
Everyone? I don't think I do. I doubt that you do. Notice that most of your comments mix individuals with abstract group entities, such as governments; i.e., the "government killed somebody."
"The West far more than most."
What is the West? This is yet another abstraction. The "West" cannot pick up a gun.
"Che - much much much less than almost all governments who bash him."
Finally, no abstraction! Che was not an abstraction. He was a man.
He was scum.
The thrust of the article was well-stated, in my view. Why would I want to wear a shirt with the image of scum on it?
Why should we idolize anyone, anyone(!), and wear them on our chest?
Regards,
jg
P.S. Forgive my stupidity, but how does one employ the system in a Reply fashion, so that quotes are italicized? I know, dumb question, but I'm overlooking this somehow...
MaterialMonkee | December 11, 2008, 6:03pm | #
"when he was literally tied up in a small mud school house awaiting his own execution ! , still complained to the local teacher that in a nation where the leaders drove Mercedes … it was a travesty that the peasants were taught in a dilapidated place like he was in"
Possibly the dumbest thing about socialism is that you always hear people say shit like that.
A few rich people have mercedes or big houses and loads of people are poor.
But actually if you look at a country Like Bolivia if you sold all the trappings of the wealthy and divide them up it doesn't actually amount to shit.
The problem with traditional statist leftwing thinking is the obsession with ownership. Its like you have a factory that makes product A and said factory is owned by some fat cat who has a big car and funky house. Therefore that wealth should be split with the workers.
The problem with this is that when you split the fat cats wealth amoung a factorys worth of workers it constitutes jack shit. The real wealth is the fact that having a factory that manufacturers product A means that most workers can afford product A.
Those who are truly devoted to the working classes should be devoted to increasing the efficiency of the factory so product A becomes cheaper and more efficient making it more widely available to the workers of the world. You help the working classes by developing new products creating more jobs and more material wealth for the working classes in terms of the manufactured product.
Social progress is only possible by technological development.
Marx Himself said that "to outlaw slavery you must invent the steam engine"
If government ownership of industry increased productivity and accelerated tehnological development, I would be a socialist.
The problem is it doesn't satisfy any of these criteria. From the UK to Venezuela state ownership has only ever reduced productivity and hence lowered the material wealth of the working classes (arguably healthcare (France) education (The UK) and Space exploration(USSR/USA) are exceptions.
The fact of the matter is communist societies never contributed to techological developments that helped the working classes. Capitalism developed the very tools that have dragged the working classes out of the middle ages and put them in the houses of the working classes, the washing machine, the p-n junction, the auto mobile.
Communist states have yielded incredible space programs, nuclear weapons and the most efficient killer of third world citizens in human history the AK-47, but they can't manufacture or develop the stuff that improves the life us working class people.
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