On Che Guevara and semiotics.

Earlier today, The Economist coughed up a social media link to a 2007 article observing the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death:

A modern saint and sinner: Why the Che myth is bad for the left

What caught my attention is the word "semiotics," the professional specialty of Italian novelist Umberto Eco.

But it is semiotics, more than politics, that leads teenagers ignorant of the Sierra Maestra to sport Che T-shirts.

After all, I was a philosophy student once.

Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs, symbols, and signification. It is the study of how meaning is created, not what it is.

In turn, the 2007 piece links to the original report from 1967, and this prescient ending:

Che Guevara's name is already being classed with that of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. Latin America's marxist “liberation” has yet to look even likely, but Guevara has died with his reputation intact. From his middle-class Argentinian youth, he became a revolutionary by conviction and profession. With the two Castro brothers he invaded Cuba in the cockleshell Granma, stayed on to help run revolutionary Cuba as minister of industry, then, perhaps growing bored, took his leave of Cuba on a dedicated secret mission to set the continent alight. He failed. But many Latin Americans will go on believing that the legends that will be spun round his Pimpernel existence may one day lead to his picture being hung beside that of the Liberator in Latin American halls.

Chevolution.

The documentary tells the story of what might be the world's most famous photograph. A former fashion photographer named Alberto Korda was taking pictures at a public memorial in Havana when Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara suddenly appeared. Korda had barely enough time to squeeze off two exposures, one of which much later became the basis for militancy, art and metaphor all over the word.

Korda received little for it, and the notion of Che's image transmuting into a mainstay of global capitalism transcends mere irony. It prompted roughly two hours of chat in my household alone. Can a photograph of a Communist revolutionary icon be brandished by non-communist money grubbers without all participants straining ideological credulity? To me, the original photograph taken by Korda remains a one-off, wonderful fluke. It's an accident with a life of its own, and the documentary is worth your time.

Yawns from the Publican and Ernesto.

LEO reader Steve will be happy to know that I paid an inflated price for my Che wallet ... in Europe.

No NABC Che

As a beer lover, I’ve been meaning to visit New Albanian Brewing Co. in New Albany. Then I read in LEO that owner Roger Baylor has a Che Guevara wallet (April 21 Mug Shots). Thanks for saving me a trip, Roger. I wouldn’t want my dollars to end up in a leather homage to a sadistic, enslaving murderer.

I’m also confident Che would not approve of the high prices Roger charges for his simple water and grains product, but he’d probably dig the wallet. Then he’d take it … at gunpoint.

Steve Newberry, Highlands

And from the People's Republic of the Highlands, no less. The tedium is growing.