The lure of the massive Chinese market has led Hollywood to readily self-censor its films to please Beijing, according to a new report by Pen America, an anti-censorship group.
Screenwriters, producers and directors in the huge US film industry are changing scripts, deleting scenes and altering other content, afraid of offending Chinese censors who control the gateway to the country’s 1.4 billion consumers, according to the report released Wednesday.
The actions include everything from deleting the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s bomber jacket in the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick, to removing China as the source of a zombie virus in 2013’s World War Z.
Photo: AFP
But it also means completely avoiding sensitive issues including Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong politics, Xinjiang and the portrayal of LGBTQ characters, the report said.
Faced with blacklisting and other punitive measures, Hollywood producers are even censoring films not targeting the Chinese market, in order to not impact others planned for Chinese theaters, Pen America says.
“Steadily, a new set of mores has taken hold in Hollywood, one in which appeasing Chinese government investors and gatekeepers has simply become a way of doing business,” the report said.
LUCRATIVE MARKET
Pen is a global organization which speaks out for the protection of freedom of expression for writers and artists worldwide. It says Beijing enforces one of the world’s most restrictive censorship systems, and numerous members of the group’s China arm have been jailed, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), who died in 2017 while serving an 11 year prison sentence.
Censorship is now centralized under the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department, which decides whether a foreign film gets access to what is soon to be the world’s largest movie market.
Only a handful of foreign films are released in China each year.
The market’s importance is clear. Hollywood films like Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far from Home< made more money in China than in the US.
“The Chinese Communist Party, in fact, holds major sway over whether a Hollywood movie will be profitable or not — and studio executives know it,” the report said.
That explained why former Disney chief executive Michael Eisner apologized to Beijing after it banned the 1997 film Kundun about the Tibetan Dalai Lama, the report said.
And Richard Gere — star of the 1997 thriller Red Corner, which depicted a corrupt Chinese justice system, and a vocal advocate for human rights in Tibet — has said Hollywood producers avoid him so as to not provoke Beijing.
Increasingly, the report said, Hollywood people “voluntarily internalize these strictures, even without being asked.”
Some even invite Chinese censors onto film sets.
One Hollywood producer told Pen: “If you come up with a project that is actively critical,” the fear is that “you or your company will actively be blacklisted, and they will interfere with your current or future project.”
Pen warned that acquiescence to Chinese censorship could become “a new normal” in countries proud of their free speech protections.
“Hollywood’s approach to acceding to Chinese dictates is setting a standard for the rest of the world,” it warned.
Miao Lin-Zucker (林季苗) wanted to teach Taiwanese how to speak French; instead she’s helping the French learn Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese). As of last week, nearly 120 people had expressed interest in the first ever Hoklo classes (listed as Taiwanais in French) offered by Les Cours d’Adultes de Paris, one of the largest public language learning institutions in France. The courses begin online next month. “It’s getting easier to explain Taiwan to people here due to its recent international visibility,” Lin-Zucker says. “So it doesn’t seem as strange anymore to promote a Taiwanese Hoklo class. I’m not training language experts
Late last week the commentariat was stirred by a TVBS poll published on Thursday showing that pro-China dinosaur, college professor and fringe presidential contender Chang Ya-chung (張亞中) was leading establishment dinosaur Eric Chu (朱立倫) 30.6 percent to 27.5 percent in a poll of Chinese National Party (KMT) members. Current KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), considered “youthful” at nearly 50, trailed with a dismal 12.8 percent. TVBS is generally regarded as pro-KMT and so would have little reason to diddle the numbers, which show that Chu, the fair-haired boy of the party’s elites, has been in a slide since the beginning of
It’s not often I glimpse something from a bus that, in a second or less, convinces me to press the stop-request button earlier than planned. But just after crossing into Taichung’s Shihgang District (石岡) from Fongyuan District (豐原), we passed a building that was so distinctive I didn’t care if I’d end up with a long walk under the hot sun. I’d never seen a fire station quite like it. The greater part was gray and somewhat bland, but to those familiar with Taiwan’s various architectural styles, the endearing cream-yellow entrance way screamed, “colonial-era public building.” My hunch turned out to be
For the past 10 years, Sonia Grego has been thinking about toilets — and more specifically what we deposit into them. “We are laser-focused on the analysis of stool,” says the Duke University research professor, with all the unselfconsciousness of someone used to talking about bodily functions. “We think there is an incredible untapped opportunity for health data. And this information is not tapped because of the universal aversion to having anything to do with your stool.” As the co-founder of Coprata, Grego is working on a toilet that uses sensors and artificial intelligence to analyze waste; she hopes to have
RSS