Mr. Panayiotou Goes To Beijing

Just as Admiral Perry cracked open Japan, just as Nixon sat face to face with Mao, one heroic Western pop group was destined to bring the decadent, rebellious sounds of rock and roll to an oppressive East. Was it the Beatles? The Stones? Dylan? The Beach Boys?

Pfft, they wished. The group to break Communism's iron grip on Chinese mass culture...

...was Wham!

Say "Ni-Hao" to the reign of the Michael dynasty. I wonder what the Mandarin translation for "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is. That's right. In 1985, Red China got its first taste of Pasty White British Guys. But were they ready? Could they handle the wild, unhinged attitude of ... Wham!? According to Wikipedia, the People's Republic came this close to being treated to actual rock and roll, if it hadn't been for the machinations of Wham!'s crafty co-manager:

In March 1985, Wham! took a break from recording to embark on a lengthy world tour, including a ground-breaking 10-day visit to China, the first by a Western pop group. The China excursion was a publicity scheme devised by Simon Napier-Bell (one of their two managers—Jazz Summers being the other). It culminated in a concert at the Workers' Gymnasium in Beijing in front of 15,000 people. Wham!'s visit to China attracted huge media attention across the world. Napier-Bell later admitted that he used cunning tactics to sabotage the efforts of rock group Queen to be the first to play in China. He made two brochures for the Chinese authorities - one featuring Wham! fans as pleasant middle-class youngsters, and one portraying Queen singer Freddie Mercury in typically flamboyant poses. The Chinese opted for Wham!

OK, OK, who in Queen's management allowed Wham!'s manager to produce a brochure on behalf of both artists? I mean really now. Did they honestly think the other guy would just be a neutral party? This one was on Queen if you ask me.

Well, the Chinese authorities obviously dodged a bullet there, because unlike Freddie Mercury, George Michael was just a wholesome, clean-cut old-fashioned British male. Nope, nothing subversive or unusual about this pop star, folks. A perfect role model for millions of impressionable young Chinese children to emulate. "Western popular music is just fine, kids, as long as you do it just like this nice, normal Mr. Michael does it, OK"?

While not quite up there with Woodstock and Gimme Shelter, the VHS concert release Foreign Skies, directed by leftist '60s British art-house filmmaker/documentarian Lindsay Anderson (!), is nevertheless a riveting portrait of a live musical powerhouse at its peak. Never before has a concert film featured:

• Martial arts sequences set to Wham!'s "Bad Boys" (6:36)
• The sexiest photo shoot ever taken at the Great Wall (7:42)
• Michael and Ridgeley, as guests of the British ambassador, discussing the finer points of foreign policy, presumably between games of croquet (12:26)
• A media spokesman explaining, in response to a question about how many people were in the "band," that Wham! featured "two main singers"; something must have gotten lost in translation? (15:48)
• The world's most appalled security guard, clearly not being able to comprehend the spectacle of "Everything She Wants" being performed right in front of him (45:26)

As for the climactic performance, it's impressive how Andrew Ridgeley, here in his "picnic blanket" phase, manages to play his guitar without its being plugged in. Also, China may have been ready for Wham!, but were they truly ready for ... Pepsi and Shirley?

The concert even features a number called "Blue" (sounding to me like the evil step-sister of "Nothing Looks The Same In the Light" from their first album) which Wham! never actually recorded in the studio. Instead, they threw the live version from China onto their farewell album The Final/Music From The Edge Of Heaven. Don't you see? Without that Beijing concert, a key piece of Wham! history would have been lost forever.



So what does Professor Higglediggle make of this watershed moment in Sino-Anglo relations?:

Turning once again to the mark of the "other," Wham! proceeded to break from Western hetero-orthodoxy and, in the words of Jacques Brisson, "transcend the theoretical breach." Posing as a British pop duo, Wham! could not overcome the stigma of co-optation and ritual (in)vocation. Yet in this very failure to bridge the tension between West and East, Michael and Ridgeley demonstrated an affinity for class antagonism, their gesture of outreach potentially (circum)navigating the unwritten "code" of diplomacy, which is to never, in the common lingua franca, bring a saxophone player. Here we see, as argued by Simone Digeau-Nille in A Sexuality of The Asexual, the power of persuasive Western iconography, as represented by wimpy synth-pop, to shake the (Far) Eastern axis of post-dialectical Marxist thought in a "symbolic" and "binary" manner, only to succumb to the subtraction of its own self-negated ideas.