Vexillology!

“Ev'rybody's talking 'bout Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m…”

--- “Give Peace a Chance” (Lennon/Ono)

Look up, and all around, on every corner, on trucks, at protests and celebrations.  Full and half-staff, on clothing and stickers, tattoos, superimposed on the body and on the body politic, a study in, well, what exactly?

I looked it up. Vexillology is “the study of flags.” There’s an International Federation of Vexillological Associations, a group of scholars who can teach us more.  Naturally, they have their own proud flag. Who knew?

It’s vexing, of course, all this flaggery.  As in annoying, puzzling, baffling.  Not because the US flag isn’t beautiful and meaningful. Or because it suggests not some imagined land of the free and the home of the brave, the Constitution, the rule of law and all the rest (“old” and “glory”) but because it’s now the banner of the Lowest Common Denominator and often worse.

We’re supposed to care, to stand (up) for it, to pledge toward endowing it with political and cultural meaning but also not impolitely and honestly point out its carelessly sadistic or coercive use by reactionaries and worse. And not “celebrate” the enduring ironies, cruel history, and untruths of the default and faulty flag story.

At anti-Trump and related assemblies, it’s waved as a symbolic protest, a distress signal, a meme-world challenge to the dark status quo. Performance art, political theater, a gesture of redefinition, however modest or only useless, it makes me wonder about Flagism, to crib from John Lennon.

I actually enjoy flags.  Some are quite beautiful, including California’s and Orange County’s.

We are currently ruled by a nutty fascist clown, a la Adenoid Hynkel in The Great Dictator. I watched this wonderful film again, part of my wife’s self-curated in-house anti-fascist film series.

My favorite-ever vexillological moment arrives in another must-watch, Chaplin’s Modern Times. Here’s retired Catholic Reporter film critic Steven D. Greydanus on one of the film’s classic scenes:

Witness the subtlety and comic timing of the scene in which the Tramp is arrested for communist agitation. Just released from a psychiatric ward, the Tramp happens to see a flatbed truck with a long load, trailing an obligatory red warning flag at the end. When the flag falls off the back of the load, the Tramp helpfully scoops it up, waving it to try to get the driver’s attention — not realizing that a throng of unemployed workers from his old job has come up behind him, demonstrating in the streets. To the police, of course, the Tramp waving his red flag at the head of the crowd looks like the leader of these agitators; and he is quickly bundled off to jail.

Charlie Chaplin: genius artist, sly social critic, blacklisted filmmaker, artist agitator, who left the US only to be rehabilitated by Hollywood and return to live out a great life in Switzerland.   

The great thing about a red flag is it works right-side up or upside down. And what matters is the people marching behind it.  That’s the real message here, then, and now.

Meanwhile, here’s a terrific issue celebrating an OC muckraker and an OC disc jockey, with new work from an OC poet and an OC short story writer, an OC novelist, a celebratory essay or two, and more. Please share our journal and do support Citric Acid with a contribution. We’re a little bit in the red (!) financially just now, but always in the orange. Hit the “Donate” button and follow the instructions.