The "Leg-Gun" Craze: How It Started And What It Is All About
Like most Internet memes, the leg-gun pose that has caught on in China is hard to describe (much less explain). It involves taking a selfie while holding your leg up as though aiming it like a rifle.
By Sadho Ram — 19 Jun 2014, 02:56 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
On 11 June 2014, China's famously irascible dissident artist Ai Weiwei posted the first leg-gun pose, who struck it in his underwear, a straw hat and little else
In this photo this photograph posted on Instagram June 11, 2014, and released by Ai Weiwei, Ai holds and aims his leg as a rifle in Beijing, China
Image via guim.co.ukDressed in shorts, black socks and a straw hat, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei uploaded a photo of himself on Instagram last week, holding up his leg and aiming it as a rifle. He then accompanied the picture with the words "Beijing Anti-Terrorism Series," which he later explained was a reference to anti-terror campaigns.
Since then, hundreds have posted versions of their own online. They've leg-gun posed in front of troops, on horseback, aiming at tanks and in staged scenes of assassination, reports The Washington Post.
Instagram users from around the world then began to follow suit, uploading images of themselves 'brandishing' their 'leg-guns' using the hashtags #endgunviolence #gunleg #gunviolence. Close to 10,000 photos have been shared and Ai himself handpicked some and has been continually promoting them on his account.
As memes go, this one has subversive political undertones, especially in a country where guns are heavily controlled by the ruling Communist Party
The timing is also interesting, coming on the heels of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in which China's military opened fire on unarmed student protesters.
washingtonpost.comWeiwei had earlier shared an image taken from Red Detachment of Women, a Communist-era ballet based on the stories of female Red Army soldier, which looks to be the origin of the leg move
One blog retweeted by Weiwei, Beijing Cream, noted the similarity of the pose to one seen in the Chinese ballet The Red Detachment of Women. The ballet was one of the eight model operas that monopolised the 1960s Chinese national landscape during the cultural revolution; a state-sanctioned depiction of one woman's rise through the Communist party.
theguardian.com
Coming, as it has, just after the 25th anniversary of the protests in Tiananmen Square, suddenly Weiwei's photo looked a lot like a satirical comment on China's onerous cultural control. Forget giving state oppression the finger; this is giving it all six barrels from your facetiously-raised thigh. It is cocking your leg at the regime.
qz.com
So, what's the message behind the 'leg gun' meme?
Ai, who has had a long history of using art as a form of protest, initially did not say. But in an interview with AP on Monday, he remarked that power was being "overused in the name of counter-terrorism".
There has been a series of violent attacks and security tensions in China, and three men were sentenced to death on Monday, over a car crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square last October that left five people dead. Local authorities have increased surveillance and tightened security in China's western Xinjiang province, launching what they call an "anti-terrorism campaign".
ap.org
"Power is being used in the name of protecting you," Ai said in the interview. "But what the authorities are actually doing is something which deserves a lot of discussion."
washingtonpost.com
"Ai Weiwei's work appeals to a very primal sense of justice that people thrive for," said gallery owner Michael Janssen, who has staged several exhibitions by Ai. "So when he begins work on a piece that could relate to anything, especially with politics, it always makes for quite an interesting phenomenon."
ap.org
While lots of his followers have labelled their photos with the #endgunviolence hashtag, there are also plenty of people excitedly proclaiming "the rifle – new dance move!" or asking "Is this the new planking?"
The photos submitted by Weiwei's followers, re-enacting his pose, range from the sublime to the ridiculous. In one, a small Asian boy fires his leg at a huge ceramic tortoise. In another, a woman fires her stilettoed leg at a tongue-poking pug.
theguardian.com
There are leg-guns on skateboards, feet pointing at tanks on TV, assassination scenes, calves trained on wall-mounted stag heads, toes aiming at acoustic guitarists, a leg-firing Kermit the Frog and one man holding his toddler's chubby leg like the world's softest machine gun. Weiwei even posted another in-his-pants shot on 13 June, which sees him firing a young boy's leg at a retaliating woman, by a small lake.
washingtonpost.com
Weiwei's so-called leg-gun series certainly raises more questions than it answers
Whether this is a political gesture, a genuinely subversive criticism of state-controlled media, an artistic expression or simply his answer to the famous "Angelina Jolie's leg" meme remains a mystery.
theguardian.com
But the fact that one underwear-flashing, calf-clasping photo can produce a global conversation about state freedom, violence, Chinese communism, artistic interpretation and global power speaks volumes about the potency of the artist in our internet age.
Cocking your leg at the system? ... what's the truth behind Ai Weiwei's mystery leg-gun project?
Image via guim.co.ukAs one Chinese commenter said on The Red Detachment of Women image posted by Weiwei, "This firing made loopholes." We'll just have to wait and see where those loopholes lead.
theguardian.com
Although Weiwei has been reluctant to explain the mysterious pose, when The Washington Post pressed for answers he responded with this cryptic and somewhat playful stream-of-consciousness answer:
"It is a pure use of social media. To pick up public notions on mixed issues — the power to control individuals…terror, arms, many issues... to use the body as weapon," he said. "You cannot do this with a novel or movie or in theater. It's more like poetry… Some are so empty; some are so profound."
washingtonpost.comAndy Warhol chose to use language everyone could easily understand, Ai noted, and the leg pose is similarly easy. "To grab your own leg as a foreign object and to ponder and to photograph. I think it is very profound."
washingtonpost.com