Nitpicking the Vincent Chin memorial mural

About a week ago, Jim Fore asked me if he could write a blog post nitpicking the new Vincent Chin memorial mural in Detroit. He thought I would object, because on this blog we usually nitpick such low-brow fare as G. I. Joe movies and Republican political ads. A memorial mural would seem to be out of our depth here.

But given how seldom we publish posts on this blog, I think that maybe we should try to fire off a post every time we come across half-baked concepts and poorly communicated messages in whatever media we find them. The Vincent Chin memorial mural abounds in both. But part of the reason we publish so infrequently is just not having time. Jim sent me some photos of the mural, but now he started a second job so he really doesn't have time to write for this blog anymore.

So I'm going to write the post about the Vincent Chin memorial mural by Andrew Pisacane, a.k.a. GAIA in Detroit. Now, Jim lives in Detroit, I don't, so I'm less qualified than he is to write this blog post. But when he gets a chance to read it, he'll let me know if I've made any mistakes. Bringing GAIA to Detroit was sponsored by the Great River Creative Corridor (GRCC), which has also sponsored murals by Detroit artists.

Good art is supposed to communicate profound messages encoded with obscure references, right? The Vincent Chin memorial mural abounds in obscure references, portraying, in addition to Vincent Chin, these three other guys: Ludwig Erhard, Sun Yun-Suan and Hayato Ikeda.

Who was Vincent Chin? According to RememberingVincentChin.com, he was a Chinese American raised in metro Detroit who was killed by two white American auto workers a week before his wedding. The two idiots thought that Chin was Japanese and therefore responsible for the American car companies' problems. The two killers spent many days in court but never a day in prison.

Who was Ludwig Erhard? Was he one of the killers? Nope. Not even related. According to the Brooklyn Street Art blog, "Ludwig Erhard was a German politician notable for his role in Germany’s robust post war recovery." Huh? What?

Alright, moving on to Yun-suan: he "was credited for overseeing the transformation of Taiwan from being a mainly agricultural economy to an export powerhouse." Again: huh? What?

Then Ikeda: "the single most important figure in Japan’s rapid growth." Right. Okay. Sure. Whatever.

I'm confused. If I'm understanding correctly, according to the artist, GAIA, these three men represent "post war economic miracles as a portrait of global competition that led to layoffs in Detroit and fueled the frustration and xenophobia behind Vincent Chin's murder." Is GAIA making excuses for the two people who actually killed Chin and shifting the blame to three politicians who most likely never met Chin in person? This is disgraceful scapegoating.

GAIA goes around the country painting murals. In Greenville, North Carolina, he painted a nice mural with calla lilies. In Atlanta, Georgia, he painted a mural with a beautiful sky and many colors. In Detroit, Michigan, he painted a gray mural tying the death of a Chinese American to three foreign politicians. Jim says "this is your typical New York artist coming to Detroit to bash this city." Jim also told me that GAIA painted over a mural by a Detroit artist.

I don't know who this GAIA is, but I wager that he is a clueless white artist operating under his own set of misconceptions. Is he that different from the men who actually killed Vincent Chin? Maybe someone should paint a mural of Ronald Ebens, Michael Nitz, Judge Charles Kaufman and GAIA, see how GAIA likes that.

No, that's a bad idea. Two wrongs don't make a right. Here's a wild, crazy idea: if you really want to paint a mural that honors Vincent Chin, try thinking about the kind of man he was and the kind of man he could have become. Maybe then the Chin family will endorse your mural.

UPDATE, August 19, 2014: Pisacane's mural has now been painted over by Sintex. Of course GRCC money man Derek Weaver has put out a statement expressing condolences to Chin's family (hey, if I was an immigrant and my son was murdered by racist idiots, I should be very sad about a mural by some clueless, privileged white man-child getting painted over, right?).

Weaver's statement also paints Sintex as an ungrateful bastard. Also of course Sintex has not been given an opportunity to present his side of the story in a coherent way. No word yet on whether Sintex will simply repaint his original mural or do something different.

Thanks for the cash, but I'll pass on the duck

Aflac pays you cash if you're injured. There's a new commercial (I don't know when it started airing) that shows a woman in her garage telling a man about how Aflac is paying her cash as the Aflac duck makes a bit of a mess playing with the tools. "He doesn't know anything about tools," the woman tells the man in response to a question from him.

Insurance commercials these days seem to feel this need to be humorous. There's GEICO, with their ads that say everyone already knows that GEICO can "save you 15% or more on car insurance." "But did you know Old McDonald was a really bad speller?" It's irrelevant, but at least it's amusing.

Compare the GEICO Old McDonald commercial to the Aflac "he doesn't know anything about tools" ad. The duck at one point attempts to start a chainsaw that could potentially slice his belly. Then with a caulk gun, he shoots the woman's coffee cup and an overhead light. The woman reminisces about how when she broke her arm, Aflac paid her claim in just four days. But with that duck fooling around in her garage, she could soon have a new claim to file.

Maybe that's amusing to you, but it's not irrelevant. "He doesn't have to know tools when he pays claims this fast," says a heading on the Aflac website. Yeah, but he does have to know tools if he's going to even think about touching any of the tools in my garage. If I chose insurance based on commercials alone, I think I'd have to go with GEICO, not Aflac.