Tear gas canisters get extremely hot when they’re discharging. Like thousands of degrees. You can get serious burns if you touch them with your bare hands. They will burn through thin gloves, possibly even the soles of your shoes if you step on one. Touch a tear gas canister as though you were touching a lump of red-hot metal.
I’m saddened, but I kind of understand, when the poster tells people not to trust the media.
It’s an iconic image — but it was captured by at least four photographers and it looks like two videographers, too. They all show slightly different moment, slightly different angles, but the same powerful concept: a single man, with shopping bags in his hands, seemingly spontaneous as he steps alone in front of a column of tanks.
First, they briefly analyze each picture, and then they let the photographer tell the story of how they captured it.
I was engrossed when I read it. But I was truly mesmerized by this video clip on YouTube (blocked in China, no doubt):
I’m not sure if I would have seen any of this on TV 20 years ago. I’m not sure if I ever knew that he climbed on the tank, or that he used such emphatic gestures, waving the tank off. It’s powerful to watch, even today.
Sad to think that we don’t really know who this man was, or what happened to him. I’d like to think he’s enjoying a quiet drink at home, frankly, musing on his fame/anti-fame.
Also, you can watch a PBS documentary on the Tank Man (and the Tiananmen legacy) for free online. It works from Canada, by the way, which is odd for US-based video streaming.
I’ve always had a thing for people who deface street signs or billboards, with one caveat — it has to be clever, or make me laugh. Sometimes, they don’t. Luckily, they often do.
Here’s a three-part gallery (part one, part two, part three) of defaced street signs that (mostly) accomplish that mission!
When I was in Montreal as a young lad, there were bilingual stop signs that said ARRETE / STOP, but francophone activists had taken red paint and covered over the S, the top of the T, part of the O and the round part of the P. That left a message of ARRETE ICI — or “stop here”. I believe that was my introduction to the world of culture jamming, although that term hadn’t been invented yet, or Adbusterized.
On the streets of my home town, I often see pedestrian crosswalk signs — which normally feature a generic walking man — given the “skateboarder” treatment (it’s simple to add a skateboard underneath just about any stick figure) or the “corporate drone” treatment (also, simple to add a briefcase and dollar figures about the head).
