I do find how Korda’s famous Che image, titled Guerillero Heroico [1] is a universal symbol of revolution, and rightfully so, to be super interesting, especially when the image is used in ways that don’t reflect Guevara’s ideologies. Che Guevara was a Marxist. Reguant mentions how Smirnoff attempted to use it to sell a type of vodka, which Korda fought against. Arguably, according to Hernandez-Reguant’s article, fought to protect the notion of the rights of creators to their creative property. This is not exactly the Marxist approach that Guevara may have taken and it’s not how Cuba had seen it before. The Che image was the “patrimony” of Cuba up until this point and the Cuban government profited off of it rather than Korda. Korda even sent the money from the lawsuit back to Cuba.
Somewhat similarly, in the late 90s, Taco Bell appropriated his image (replacing El Ché with a chihuahua) and used it to promote a Taco revolution -Latin Americans were not pleased [2]. Dacia Logan, a car company, included both Castro and Guevara in one of their ads. Converse, the shoe company, has even produced a shoe with Guevara’s face on it. The list goes on -it’s a little funny, in a sad kind of way, I guess, to see this revolutionary Marxist hero reduced to the capitalist endeavor selling shoes and cars.Watch movie online John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
On a similar note, the revolutionary and anti-establishment airs of the Guy Fawkes mask is also somewhat ironically funny. Since it was popularized by the movie (based on the 80s comic) V for Vendetta, the Guy Fawkes mask has represented dissatisfaction authority and bureaucracy[3]. The main character of the movie (and the comic-especially in the comic), V, was, not only revolutionary, but anarchical. The irony comes in when the goal of the real Guy Fawkes are taken into account. He was an English Catholic that plotted against the English monarchs, the establishment, with a Catholic monarch, another establishment with an allegiance to an even more widespread establishment -or something like that (it’s been awhile since I’ve read about this). That’s why effigies of Guy Fawkes are traditionally burned in Britain every year. Whether freedom-fighters or destabilizers, it’s funny how much their chosen face symbolizes many other, very different things, to other people.
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