Venus of the Lockdowns
The Myanmar Coup Dancer
A military coup took place in Myanmar on February 1, 2021. If anyone outside of Myanmar remembers that, it will most likely be due to the popular video that emerged of a local aerobics instructor—Khing Hnin Wai—doing a dance/exercise video as sinister-looking black SUVs streamed past her in the background, on their way to the national assembly building. Here she was, dancing, seemingly oblivious to the coup happening in real time right behind her. I call Khing the “Venus of the Lockdowns” and her image serves as the banner for Disaster X.
This was, for me, the iconic lockdown video of 3/11. It encapsulates so much of the totality of the experience that it will be difficult to find anything to rival it. It’s an unintentional work of art that needs to be preserved and shown in museums.
First, she is wearing a mask—outdoors—when accompanied by no one other than herself. The video thus captures that part of the globalized mask hysteria, founded on fear and ignorance—nothing more or less than ritual paraphernalia designed to signal our allegiance to the regime. This was regime “science” at its “finest”.
Second, she is self-involved. (Yes, she has to be, she is leading an exercise routine in front of a camera...I get it, no need to lecture me about the obvious.) This mirrored how most individuals pursued everyday life during the lockdowns: leading their private and isolated lives, and trying to carry on as normal. She is not only normalizing the extraordinary, and making do with that, she has managed to blank the exterior world to such a degree that she misses a life-changing moment in her country’s history.
Third, the coup that took place behind our backs. A coup happened everywhere, where pandemicism ruled, not just in Myanmar. A mad grab for more power, by the already powerful. A compliant population, falling in line, trusting everything would be alright.
Fourth, militarization. Besides the video showing a military coup in progress, just look at the dance moves—they are martial. Regimented, repetitive, militaristic—this was the dominant ethos of 3/11. Almost any atrocity could have been committed by the authorities, and if not demanding it then most would have been satisfied with the actions and would have found ways of justifying them. I still cannot get over the fact that I, along with about six million other Canadians, was held prisoner by my own government, banned from all long-distance travel that did not involve a car, and banned from entering a wide array of stores and facilities.
She is mesmerizing, isn’t she? Watch the mechanical, almost robotic sequences—the perfectly objectified “person,” like some cuckoo clock all wound up. Watch the martial moves, almost as if she were narrating events in the background for the hearing impaired, an accidental cheerleader for a coup. Listen to the electronic music of blips and squeals, and the coincidental siren effects, adding a sense of drama: the sound of emergency. Watch how one of her dance moves seems to imitate the motions of a person tearing a mask off their face—it’s good to fantasize. Here we are, all alone, exercising as power runs reality behind our backs. As power writes reality on the big grey page in the background, she appears as little more than a mere cursor. Nothing but a blipping yellow dot on the screen. Just another masked pandemic emoji.
Fifth, social media, capturing everyone’s attention. We are told this video went “viral” (“virality” was the theme of Covid-19). People glued to their screens, perhaps more than usual. Life lived in bubbles and pods, experiencing “communities” engineered by algorithms and governed by censors, people could coalesce in a snug sense of pretend unanimity. When it ended, they turned on each other, with no more talk of “solidarity” and no more bidding farewell with “stay safe”.
Sixth, Asia—and I do not mean to encourage gratuitous anti-Asian xenophobia here. Yet, there is no denying that the first scenes of mass lockdowns and viral hysteria were televised to the world, out of Asia, and that the alleged virus is alleged to have originated in Asia (again). And here we have an Asian lady in a mask, the way most of us pictured urban Asians in the years and decades prior to Covid-19. Here she acts, quite unintentionally, as if branding for a virus.
Some of the traits of the video that were emblematic of 3/11, but did not originate with 3/11, have continued. The main ones being regimentation, militarism, normalization of the exceptional (and criminalization of the everyday), and the ability of people to carry on as power rolls out behind their backs.
For all of the reasons above, I am dubbing the Myanmar coup dancer as the Venus of the Lockdowns. Viewed from a certain angle, she could appear as a mascot of so much that has gone awry when it comes to public responses to heightened authoritarianism. But that is just one, highly interpretive way of viewing that video.