Dylan's Christian Message in China

Last Updated on Saturday, 07 May 2011 13:37 Saturday, 07 May 2011 13:16

Written by Fr. Robert Barron

0 Comments

Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post writes,

This past Saturday, Maureen Dowd complained [MEMO TO LEGAL: Does the phrase "Maureen Dowd complained" infringe on a New York Times copyright?] that American folk hero Bob Dylan -- who had previously delivered the most haunting Victoria's Secret commercial ever made -- was a straight up "sell out." Dylan's misstep? He performed two concerts in China and utterly failed to play "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and "Blowin' in the Wind" -- two songs whose radical use of the dropped-g form of the present participle would have touched off a human rights revolution throughout China. According to a similar report, the shows were attended by "a large percentage of foreigners, members of Beijing's expatriate community and many of them baby boomers who grew up with Dylan's music," but who evidently have not done a good job themselves taking Dylan's message out into the hinterlands to reform China from within.

So it fell to Dylan himself to take his message to those few Chinese that were in attendance, no doubt to be further indoctrinated by the Chinese government, subliminally, through the song "Tangled Up In Blue."

Dowd writes:

Iconic songs of revolution like "The Times They Are a-Changin,'" and "Blowin' in the Wind" wouldn't have been an appropriate soundtrack for the 2,000 Chinese apparatchiks in the audience taking a relaxing break from repression.

Spooked by the surge of democracy sweeping the Middle East, China is conducting the harshest crackdown on artists, lawyers, writers and dissidents in a decade. It is censoring (or "harmonizing," as it euphemizes) the Internet and dispatching the secret police to arrest willy-nilly, including Ai Weiwei, the famous artist and architect of the Bird's Nest, Beijing's Olympic stadium.

--

Fr. Robert Barron examines Dylan's play list at his China concerts and comes away with a much different take -  Bob Dylan highlighted his most explicitly Christian pieces in China.