To understand the mindset of the people who try to control the flow of information inside China, it is instructive to look at a recent decision by Chinese officials to censor a few scenes from the blockbuster movie Mission Impossible 3 or MI:3. Did the censors cut scenes of improper sexual activity or full frontal nudity or vulgar language? No, fearful of how the good citizens of China might react to certain scenes filmed in the country last year, the censors cut scenes they felt were insulting to Shanghai and the good name of China.
According to a report in the Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, communist censors were unhappy about scenes showing laundry hanging on bamboo poles and a slow response by police in the movie to a high-speed chase. As a result of this cinematic brouhaha, Tom Cruise fans in China will have to wait until July 20 to see the toned-down action, as the cuts are being made as you read these words.
The censorship of MI:3 is so silly it boggles the mind, but then again, the way the censors work in a mind-controlled communist dictatorship is something we know very well from the history of the former USSR. But look at what happened to the USSR: It eventually fell apart and the doors to freedom and cinematic liberties opened. Could such a fate befall Communist China? Sure, and it will, but the wait for a Chinese Gorbachev to arise and make his or her presence known might take a while.
Meanwhile, another Hollywood blockbuster, Tom Hanks' The Da Vinci Code has been pulled from Chinese cinemas. Earlier this year, there were also reports that Chinese censors had cut a few key scenes from Memoirs of a Geisha -- scenes that belittled Chinese actresses seen cavorting onscreen with Japanese actors.
But these examples are useful when studying how the Chinese propagandists do their work, and, more importantly, how they think. Soviet-era propaganda is now a thing of the past, but when the USSR was in full bloom, film and book and newspaper censors put in long, frightful days snipping this and cutting that -- all to ensure that the Soviet people would think and act the way their puppetmasters wanted them to. Now we see the same laughable behavior in China; but while it's funny, it's also very sad.
Will China ever become a free, democratic country, where people are allowed to think, see and feel the way they want, or will it always remain a Communist Party-controlled dictatorship? Nobody can predict when and how the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will take place, but one can say with certainty that this Chinese folly cannot last forever in this day of Internet, e-mail and open challenges to state control.
So for this summer, movie audiences in China will have to make do with a watered down version of MI:3 and go on living for another day, when the CCP fades away into the setting sun of history. Until then, the censors will continue having a field day cutting this and banning that, all in the name of the motherland.
Let me tell you something: China is no motherland. It is a puppetland of string-pullers and master craftsmen who control the stage lights and all the exits and entrances. If someone ever tried to make a movie about this tightly controlled puppetland, it would probably come across as a tragicomedy with a deep existential core. And, of course, this make-believe movie would never be allowed to be shown in this very real puppetland because every day is like 1984 in communist China and the sun can't shine in such a dark, rank place.
A silly Hollywood movie is hardly important. But when the state censors get all worked up about showing the dirty laundry of Shanghai to the people, then something is deeply, perversely wrong.
Dan Bloom is a freelancer based in Chiayi.
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