Tank Man

About

Tank Man refers to the unidentified protestor who stood in front of a line of tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Tiananmen Square, China. Photographs of the man's act of civil disobedience have become world-renowned for their historical import and political messaging with many considering them to be among the most important photographs of all time. Due to its prevalence in culture, it has also been subject to many forms of parody, both in popular culture and online.

Origin

On June 5th, 1989, just one day following the Tiananmen Square protests, which ended by way of violent government intervention, a line of tanks drove down the thoroughfare of Tiananmen Square and were blocked by a lone man holding a shopping bag. The man's blockade seemed to work for a short time, as the tanks halted, giving the man time to climb aboard the tank, seemingly speak with the driver, and get down. After a short back and forth, the man was detained and taken away--however, it is unclear who removed the man from the avenue.

Photographs of the man have become the subject of great reverence. The most used version is the one taken by Jeff Widener
(shown below, left). Other photographers, such as photographers Stuart Franklin and Arthur Tsang, also received much acclaim for their work capturing the event(shown below, center and right, respectively).^[1]

Spread

While the man's identity has never been made public by witnesses, Chinese officials or the man himself, the Sunday Express reported that Tank Man's identity was 19-year-old student Wang Weilin.^[2]

The moment has since been parodied numerous times in popular culture. On January 31st, 1999, the moment was parodied in the first episode of the American animated sitcom Family Guy (shown below, left).

On December 31st, 2002, the fast-food chain restaurant aired a commercial that parodied the event, replacing the subjects with a cow and several farming vehicles (shown below, left).^[3] The following year, on March 9th, 2003, the American animated sitcom The Simpsons parodied the event, as well, in the episode "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington" (screenshot below, right).^[4]

On September 17th, 2005, YouTuber Daniel Rodriguez Herrera uploaded a video of the confrontation to YouTube. In 14 years, the video received more than 4 million views (shown below).

Three years later, Flickr user Balakov posted a variation of the photograph using LEGO block toys.^[5] Within 11 years, the post received more than 300,000 views (shown below, left).

In the years since, the image has been subjected to numerous photoshops, editing the image and replacing the tanks with various other objects. The following year, on June 3rd, 2009, Imgur^[6] user TIHZ_HO added a version replacing the tanks with images of the character "Hello Kitty." The post received more than 1,500 views in 10 years (shown below, right).

Big Yellow Duck

On May 2nd, 2013, one of Hofman’s 54-foot high yellow inflatable ducks was launched in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor (shown below, left). On May 15th, the sculpture mysteriously deflated (shown below, right), which resulted in the hashtag “#bigyellowduck” rising to the top searched keyword on the Chinese microblogging and social networking site Weibo.

Sina Weibo user Weiblog subsequently posted a photoshopped version of the 1989 photograph “Tank Man” (shown below, left) from the Tiananmen Square protests, in which the tanks were replaced with the large duck sculptures (shown below, right). Leading up to the anniversary of the protests on June 4th, several words were censored on Sina Weibo, including “1989,” “In today,” “anniversary” and “big yellow duck."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References