Through the looking-glass of Current Affairs

How do you get schoolkids interested in world affairs? Simple. Tell news stories in cartoon form, or wrap them in allusions to Jay Chou or Stephen Chow, and the kids'll be all over it.

That's the thinking behind Current Affairs (aka Current Affairs Magic Mirror 《时事魔镜》), a new magazine put out by the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper group. In a look at the ads that announced the magazine's launch, Danwei called Current Affairs "the bastard child of the Xinhua News Agency and Mad Magazine." From the July/August issue, it looks like Xinhua's bloodline is stronger, but there's still a healthy dose of irreverence and inspired absurdity running through it.

The magazine opens with a depiction of the debate over the EU constitution done in the style of Stephen Chow's classic A Chinese Odyssey, with The Netherlands, France, and the rotating EU presidency arguing over vetoes using famous lines from the movie. France gets cast as the prating monk, singing "Only youuuu, can decide not to join the EU." Jay Chou arrives later in the form of his smash hit rap from a few years back, "Nunchucks," rewritten to mock Gloria Arroyo's electoral scandal.

Saddam gets several pages in this issue. Pictured here is the illustration from The Unauthorized Story of the Silence of the Lambs, a treatment of a proposed silent film starring Saddam as he undergoes interrogation. There's also a synopsis of his new novel and an exposé of his new hidden-camera photobook, Saddam's Life in Prison, written using online slang.

Current Affairs is aimed at schoolchildren from the upper primary grades through high-school, although the articles in the current issue seem to skew toward the older grades. Stories about the Queen Mother's birthday, the fashion sense of Queen Rania al-Abdullah of Jordan, and the cell phone number of the president of Indonesia are reminiscent of the fortnightly column in Beijing Children's Weekly that was Current Affairs' earlier incarnation, but the majority of the topics, treatments, and cultural references seem more suited to high-school students. This is probably part of the plan, though - older students won't be reading "kids' stuff," and younger ones can have fun feeling mature.

I spoke with administrative editor (and writer) Cai Xiaogang via email, and I was informed that apart from outside subscriptions (54 yuan per year for 6 issues), Current Affairs is distributed through existing networks that the Beijing Youth Daily group has set up with schools. This resembles how, growing up, my class was issued a Scholastic Weekly Reader every Friday, and in fact, it's just that sort of magazine that Current Affairs reminds me of. Only I don't recall Weekly Reader using quite so much slang.

While the magazine bills itself as "The world's first international-affairs cartoon reader" (and Danwei would love to hear if there are others), only four stories are rendered in comic-strip form. Pictured here is The Solo Hacker, the story of Gary McKinnon (see below for a translation). There's also Deep Throat, which ends with Mark Felt covered in a whack of cash, New Puzzles in the Case of Princess Di, and Mission to Blow the Dam, about the British airforce skipping bombs across the water to blow up a German dam in 1943.

It seems as if such an irreverent, juvenile take on serious international issues would raise the ire of parents and teachers, much in the same way last year's enormously popular Q Reader got banned for failing to treat the classics with the proper respect (see the Danwei article). But Cai Xiaogang says this is not the case:

This is not an "alternative" (另类) magazine; we merely use techniques that children enjoy to depict current news stories. The content mainly follows the major international news stories put out by Xinhua that month, and all photos are licensed from Xinhua. A survey of the readership shows a favorable reaction from both the youth and their parents.

And parents' concerns are probably mollified by the fact that not all of the articles follow the same pattern of satire. A piece on the May blackouts in Moscow is written as a pastiche of four short essays by Lu Xun. Sure, it's basically the same technique used in the Chinese Odyssey-EU piece, but what parent is going to reject an article that states up front that it requires knowledge of the master of 20th century Chinese literature?

Several other pieces are done in a serious, if conversational, style, so yes, it's not all Mad Magazine. Looks at debt forgiveness, the Iranian presidency, and hostage situations are played straight, even as their language is directed at schoolchildren. There seem to be boundaries of taste: when it is possible to satirize, when the target is a world leader or an inherently comic state of affairs, the magazine has a grand time of it, but it maintains a sensitivity toward more tragic situations.

The only area in which Current Affairs is lacking is in its coverage of domestic news - in short, there isn't any. The only two articles that come even close are a comparison of Andrew Bogut and Yao Ming, and a look at the survey that ranked China above the US in international image.

This is by design; Cai Xiaogang says, "Since the magazine is an international current affairs magainze, we will not be addressing domestic affairs." Wise, and necessary, given the current state of mainland journalism. While the thought of a caricature of Hu Jintao jumping around singing "Only youuuuu..." is immensely amusing, there's probably a wait of a few more years before that'd be allowed to occur.

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The following is a rough translation of the comic strip linked above.

The Solo Hacker

1. At the Pentagon / 2001 / Calling base! / Sir! A Hacker has penetrated! / Quick, check the documents! / The documents have been deleted!

2. US Department of Defense networks have been breached by a hacker. Large numbers of classified documents have leaked out. And... / The system's been shut down! / Find him! / An unemployed man named McKinnon / UFO... / Looking for UFOs.

3. McKinnon, you've been laid off. / BANG---

4. @#$%^&* / The DoD networks must have information about him!

1. The net... WHAP! / UFO, here I come! / Entering... / YEAH!

2. Gotcha, kid! / He's in England! / Don't move! Police!

3. I believe the DoD is covering up secrets about UFOs! / ?! / So I hacked in...

4. US DoD He's cost us $100 million! And he's stolen lots of secrets! / McKinnon will shortly be extradited to the US, where according to US law, he will face 70 years in prison... / We must have him extradited! / He's one solo hacker! / I only wanted to find UFOs!