Rubber Ducks: the Power of Symbols
Thank you to Heather Krishnaswamy for the rubber duck photo!
When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (he didn’t like to be called a dissident) was alive, rubber ducks were often used as symbols of his fight against corruption. When he died (possibly murdered, possibly tortured and starved until his body couldn't take it any more) in February 2024, ducks showed up as symbols of protest against the regime responsible, one way or another, for his death. Whether by association or coincidence, rubber ducks have also been used by protesters in Thailand, and briefly, via Hong Kong, on Chinese social media.
An NPR Rough Translation episode introduced me to Alexandra Arkhipova, an anthropologist of folklore. She studies, collects and shares instances of "semiotic war" in a country where protesting can land you in prison. Those ducks, seemingly innocent, were symbols with the power to fire the imagination, offering courage through humor—something Navalny himself had an unbelievable capacity to do.
Lines of ballerinas, referring to Swan Lake, have also shown up in imagery of Russian protests. Because Swan Lake has traditionally been played on the radio when powerful leaders have died, the tune and its visual representation carry a coded message—I wish for this leader to go away, to be replaced. I wish for this country to change.
If you can’t speak out loud, if you don’t have a voice, you use a symbol to carry your story, to make yourself heard.
As soon as the authorities catch on and begin arresting you for carrying a duck or putting up a poster with ballerinas, of course, the symbol must be switched out. But it’s a powerful affirmation of a code that Arkhipova refers to as “Aesopian language.” That, it turns out, is description first used by Russian satirist M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, meaning a “figurative language of slavery” and the “ability to speak between the lines…at a time when literature was in a state of bondage.”
Think you have freedom of speech where you live? Think you’ll never need to use such circuitous modes of communication? Think again. A 2024 Pew survey came up with pretty startling numbers. Turns out that of the three countries I count as mine, 27% of Canadians, 32% of Americans, and a staggering 85% of Indians say that rule by a strong leader or by the military would be a good way of governing their country. Makes me wonder, when I travel to India, should I pack a rubber duck?
