Media Gallery
The upcoming action film Red Dawn, slated for a November release, shows a group of plucky American teenagers fending off a North Korean invasion. The movie was originally filmed with Chinese antagonists, shouting dictatorial-sounding Mandarin and all, but was later edited—at a cost of $1 million—to change the attackers to North Koreans.
The press has jumped on this move as one of Chinese appeasement or—as On the Media so delicately put it—kowtowing. Another cited example was the deletion of scenes from the Chinese version of Men in Black 3—which showed New York Chinatown restaurant workers as alien mutants—to tailor the film for Chinese release.
This censorship takes place against a backdrop of growing Chinese influence in Hollywood. Chinese media companies are starting to co-produce big blockbusters like Iron Man 3, and more shooting is taking place in China. And perhaps ironically, it was released late last month that the Wanda Group, a Chinese company, agreed to acquire AMC Entertainment and its 5,000 movie screens for $2.6 billion, a move that will make it the largest movie theater operator in the United States.
The media has chosen to use pretty one-sided political rhetoric to discuss American filmmaking decisions. A Miami Herald headline blared, “Hollywood gripped by pressure system from China,” while the Los Angeles Times characterized Hollywood’s actions as “tr[ying] to stay on China’s good side.”
Certainly, China’s censorship policies have been known to be draconian. But are we letting Hollywood off the hook too easily? Hollywood’s so-called appeasement strategy is ultimately also a strategy to boost profits. China is Hollywood’s second largest market, and producers are salivating at the prospect of nabbing a piece of the growing Chinese middle-class pie.
And censorship aside, let’s not forget the recent disaster film 2012, wherein Chinese engineers build the arks that save North Americans from apocalyptic floods. Later, the arks are greeted in China by the People’s Liberation Army, who say, “Welcome to China.” In Shanghai, moviegoers stood up in the theater and applauded at this line; the film was a huge hit.
This sounds more like pandering than censorship. Obviously, nobody’s denying that China is host to huge civil rights problems. But can we really pretend that Hollywood is itself the most idealistic, forward-thinking industry? It’s hard to argue that what Hollywood is doing now is any different from its other profit-fueled sleazy dealings (think sexist “guy humor” films). With China, the reality is complicated: there’s much to be gained on both sides from an amicable film partnership; there are potentially things to lose too. A complex phenomenon deserves a complex discourse, so the media should save its overly simplistic “Red China” narrative for the James Bond re-runs.
Lynne Sachs talks about her film on immigrant experiences in Chinatown shift-bed houses.
“81 Bowery is their home and their only choice for a place to live.”
Maroosha Muzaffar talks to a taxi-dancer, who works at one of the many taxi-bars in Jackson Heights, Queens, where lonely immigrant men pay for a dance and a shot at love.
There are 42,000 cab drivers in New York City--and 82% of them are immigrants. Many from them from white collars jobs back in their home country.
Writer Katie Salisbury goes on a quest to Mission Chinese to check out the monster success of Asian hipster cuisine.
The propaganda … sorry, righteous moral indignation that the American media is fuminating about Hollywood and China is predictably disingenous and hypocritical.
As noted in this article, Hollywood is interested in one thing: exploiting the Chinese market. And like all good businessmen, they realize it’s probably not a great idea to demonize the audience that you want to peddle your movie to.
But, some in the American media like the LA Times, Miami Herald, and On the Media apparently prefer the “good old days” when Hollywood would pander to overt anti-Asian racism and American nationalist jingoism without even the appearance of respecting their non-Amurikan (read: White) audiences.
And here’s an interesting discussion of Hollywood censorship the “embedded” American free press won’t touch in any honest manner: the role of the American military in influencing and shaping the content of Hollywood films for decades. The recent flick, Act of Valor, is but one outstanding example.
It’s all part of the American Military-Entertainment Complex.
But I doubt that any of cruaders for press freedom like the LA Times, Miami Herald, etc. above will discuss this issue in any critical way. After all, that wouldn’t be Patriotically Correct.
Operation Hollywood
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8163.htm
Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon Goes Hollywood
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174908/