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Comment by schoen | Hacker News Reader

Something that might be comparably shocking is the extent to which Chinese investors and government representatives influence the content of Hollywood movies that depict or refer to China. There were some news reports about this in the last couple of years; I sat next to a Hollywood studio executive on a flight last month and (rather than arguing about copyright policy) commiserated about this issue. He confirmed that there are organized systems in place with representatives sent to monitor film content to ensure Chinese market access and avoid upsetting investors.

This has been reported quite a bit for several years; see, e.g.,

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/18/407619652/h... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/business/media/in-hollywoo... http://origin.www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Dire...

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That third link is fascinating - not just for he insights into how Chinese censors indirectly guide producers, but also for the lack of ironic detachment and self-awareness shown by the American analysts, eg

Red Dawn, a remake of a 1980s action movie about a Soviet invasion of the United States, was originally shot featuring China as the antagonist invading the United States. According to Mr. Shiao, however, the Chinese are “not interested in their country being perceived as a violent military threat to the lives of average Americans.”

and

A 'Captain Phillips' executive identified the tone of the film as a source of discomfort for censors, particularly “the big Military machine of the U.S. saving one U.S. citizen. China would never do the same and in no way would want to promote this idea.”

While I think censorship an unwise and ultimately self-defeating policy, and also agree with the basic premise that a good many of the rules are just dressed up protectionism, I can't really blame China for declining to import overt propaganda. China makes lots of propagandistic films, but the propaganda is mainly about what China should be like. It'll be some time before they produce an overtly anti-American film like Brother 2 or Valley of the Wolves (as opposed to striaght-up propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_8lSjcoSW8) and I doubt whether it would be well-received here if they did.

I was watching Argo on my Chinese IPTV streaming service in Shenzhen with my Chinese roommate and my roommate was blown away by the idea that the movie was based on a true story. He said that the Chinese government would never take such extreme steps to rescue its citizens from any such situation. I never really thought about his comment and his shock (it was a lot of shock) until reading this just now. Wow, interesting.

Those six were no ordinary citizens, they were diplomats.

Argo is a deeply troubling film. From the one-dimensionality of the Iranians to the complete lack of historical context ignoring prior US meddling and interfering in internal Iranian affairs[1]. The involvement of the CIA in the production[2]. The historical inaccuracies of the film[3]. The timing of the release of the film given Iranian-Western relations over its nuclear program.

For me Argo is basically unwatchable US patriotic screen-fodder bordering on propaganda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état#Unite...

[2] https://www.amazon.de/CIA-Hollywood-Agency-Shapes-Television...

“Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are only the latest film productions the CIA has influenced in the 15 years since the Agency opened its official liaison office to Hollywood […]”

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(2012_film)#Historical_in...

Thanks for this comment it perfectly describes the way I felt when I watched Argo.

Can you tell me/us a little about that youtube link? I looked at it and it's all in chinese/mandarin so can't really understand much. A small skip forward showed Gorbatjev and Yeltsin in some kind of parlamentiary setting and the audience laughing loudly. I'm very curious now.

Oh sorry! It's a Chinese propaganda 'documentary' put out by the Defense Ministry of the PRC. I did look for a subtitled/captioned version but no luck, though you can find rough transcripts on other pages.

Essentially it extrapolates from an (apparently genuine) GIA document produced during the 1990s, laying out a rough 'recipe' for turning a country towards western democracy by cultural, institutional, and political influence (or subversion, depending on your point of view) - essentially the 'soft power' approach of American diplomacy, backed up by the 90s-era conviction that we'd entered the 'end of history' following the fall of the USSR and that it was only a matter of time before every country switched to democracy and free markets because That's What Works. So this film is 50% a review of history from the Chinese and communist perspectives (worth remembering that Chinese history goes back ~5000 years so they see Marxism as a political technology rather than an identity), and 50% a how-to guide on spotting insidious Western cultural viruses.

Amusingly enough some of their complaints overlap with the complaints of western conservatives about 'cultural Marxism' which alleges that the entertainment industry is bent on unmaking national social consenses and replacing them with one world globalist tyranny. I wouldn't be surprised to find some films are considered objectionable by both communists and conservatives.

I'm not a fan of this kind of government influence in filmmaking, but so long as the Chinese are at it maybe they could turn their attention to Hollywood's propensity to depict Asian males as undesirable emasculated nerds and Asian females as fetishized objects.

Like Big Hero 6?

I've yet to see that film, although the reviews look pretty good so I'll have to give it a view when I get the chance.

It has a very good portrayal of Asians, at least, though still nerdy (but the trope is subverted multiple times). Hollywood is getting better at it.

Miraculous ladybug also defies the trope, but in a mixed race context (Chinese-French).

I don't watch many major movie releases anymore so I could well be out of the loop and misinformed. If Hollywood is truly getting better at not using the kinds of ethnic, racial, and gender tropes that make for cheap laughs and storytelling then that is very good news to me.

And thanks for the movie tips!

The first is a movie, the latter is a cartoon.

Hollywood is huge, everyone has their own standards.

And yet every time Hollywood adapts a Japanese property they seem to be unable to find any Asian actors in California to portray any Major roles.

Likewise, when japan does live action versions of their anime, they are unable to find Caucasian actors to fill roles that are obviously Caucasian. Tamaki Suoh in Ouran Host Club obviously has blonde hair and blue eyes in the anime, but in the live action becomes completely Japanese! Perhaps they just couldn't find an actor that looked the role?

Japan is 98% Japanese - that comparison doesn't even make sense.

>Perhaps they just couldn't find an actor that looked the role?

Of course they could, but the problem is it seems as if they wouldn't dare try. They stopped looking after "the one hot female lead we put in every sci-fi movie now."

Yes they are. Yet they present a diverse universe of characters whose ethnicities are clearly not Japanese or are very ambiguous.

Note that for this reason, there was no controversy about the casting of the GIS protagonist in Japan itself. The vocal critics have all been Asian Americans. But that doesn't really say much, as this movie is being judged as an American one rather than a Japanese one; the lack of Asian American actors getting roles like these bothers me also.

>Note that for this reason, there was no controversy about the casting of the GIS protagonist in Japan itself. The vocal critics have all been Asian Americans.

Because Asian Americans are more aware of the lack of diversity in roles for Asians in American movies. Japanese people would have no idea about that because where they live, every hero on every screen in every Japanese movie is Japanese.

I'm well aware of the style in anime to present characters as "stateless", and why it's done, but that isn't the problem. Asian actors appearing to not be on equal footing with Caucasian and African American actors when it comes to the roles they're allowed to portray is the problem.

I'm sick of seeing the same few faces in everything.

The standard excuse is there are no Japanese actors with good enough English skills. Why they can't draw from the Nisei population in Hawaii and the west coast is still baffling.

> roles that are obviously Caucasian

Are they? Anime characters do not seem to be bound by typical (or even possible) hair and eye colours. Couldn't such characters be, well, ethnic Japanese people who happen to have an unusual hair colour? That seems to be the general assumption.

Their ethnicities are often explicitly specified (Tameki has a French mother). Japan is also not that homogenous. Sometimes the ethnicities are left ambiguous, in which case it could be hair/eye coloring.

In ghost in the shell, the protagonist is a robot or cyborg, ethnicity isn't fixed.

>Couldn't such characters be, well, ethnic Japanese people who happen to have an unusual hair colour?

yes, it's a conscious design choice[0,1]. They're not "obviously Caucasian" so much as "not obviously anything."

[0]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki

[1]https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Mukokuseki-rarely-appear-in-W...

> And yet every time Hollywood adapts a Japanese property they seem to be unable to find any Asian actors in California to portray any Major roles.

Hollywood wants major established Hollywood names that are perceived as major draws in and of themselves in major roles on any major projects. Insofar as the output of that process has apparent racial bias (and it does, significantly) it's largely an effect of the fact that the process by which one becomes an established Hollywood name with big perceived drawing power involves many, many sources of bias.

I can think of plenty of anime that does the same, westerners are likewise typecast as the big strong idiots.

Red 2 has a Korean male assassin whose main role in the film is to be eye candy for the female audience. So it seems things are changing.

American investors and government influence the content of Hollywood movies that depict the US or US activity, so I'm not sure why that should be particularly shocking. This is what happens in a globalized economy.

Except a movie could be totally subversive of the American government (the CIA or military is the bad guy, a national/state/local government is corrupt, etc...) and the movie could still go into wide production and make millions of dollars. Heck, it even is super easy to find examples of that (you want to know the truth? You can't handle the truth!).

Now try doing that in China. Make the PLA the enemy or portray a corrupt out of control official in Chongqing like Bo Xilai. Not allowed, because it is way too close to the truth for comfort, maybe.

There are a lot of US movies that go the other way - praising the US military/portraying conflicts in good vs evil way.

Example is Battle Los Angeles (2011) and American Sniper (2015). So such things are in effect "soft propaganda".

In China, to protect themselves against such soft influence, they enact regulations. Letting people watch all US movies without a filter is effectively letting US set the cultural standards and values.

I am not advocating for such a strategy, but since some other countries don't have the technological capability to make engaging soft cultural influence movies, I get where they're coming from.

I really have no problem with that...I find these movies pretty boring myself. But the fact that a Chinese film maker cannot make a movie about china with critical social commentary is a huge problem for China's social development.

This is an important point. We're usually only tuned in to notice the propaganda of our "enemies", because to us they're evil and any attempt to appear otherwise is outrageous.

Another film example is Act of Valor (2012). An enjoyable demonstration of real military hardware, accompanied by god mode special forces operators, jumping in to any country, saving the world from super villains. This film provides a sense of security to the US and it's allies whilst simultaneously instilling fear in it's enemies.

All respect to the real heroes out there, military and otherwise.

Those are mild examples compared to the trend that started with, IIRC, Top Gun, where the US millitary trades use of millitary assets as props in return for the "right" spin being put on the movie.

> Letting people watch all US movies without a filter is effectively letting US set the cultural standards and values.

No, it's letting the people set the cultural standards and values, by deciding what to watch and what not to watch.

> letting the people set the cultural standards and values, by deciding what to watch and what not to watch. If you believe that is how things work I think you may be being naive. "deciding" would depend on film budget (hire stars / pay for special effects), contractual agreements with vendors e.g. tv stations to play that content and advertising. How many people truly decided to have coca cola, mcdonalds and wear nike trainers....or did they do what advertising told them to.

In essence, you are arguing that people aren't smart enough (or are otherwise too prone to being manipulated) to decide for themselves in general, and if they're allowed to, then their decision-making process will be manipulated by some much smaller group of people.

Assuming that is okay for a moment. Your solution to that is to give another small group of people the power to explicitly override that decision-making, by fiat, without even having to go through the motions of convincing propaganda.

Which is better how exactly? Because this latter small group of people will be "benevolent dictators", acting in the larger group's best interests even as they override its decisions? They certainly claim to be that, but why should we believe them over the other guys?

I wonder if there is any correlation or causation between portrayal of the government in films and the actual impression of the government.

To me it seems that U.S. likes to portray government in a negative way in films, and in real life a sizeable portion of the people are also not happy with the government. The reverse is true in China.

I mentioned the difference in people-government relationship earlier but didn't think of the link to the media and film industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13203027

Interesting question. We will never know the other way since the government in china controls the film industry, all films must get pre-plot approval. Whether pro government films positively affect perception, i would guess that it works for a certain segment of the mass population (a silent majority in Reagan's terms) but not really the middle class.

The existence of dissatisfaction with the American government probably drives production of subversive films, rather than the other way around. People are usually predisposed to media that fits their views, not the other way around.

For example, Disney/Marvel changed the location from Tibet in the Doctor Strange movie so as not to offend China.

I work in the games industry and we had to remove "Taiwan" as a country option if we wanted to release our game in China. There's a lot of push if you want to release anything on the market there.

The whole One China policy is incredibly dumb. Out of the last 120 years, Taiwan has actually been part of the mainland Chinese state for all of 4 years, 4 years in which they were in fact controlled by the same government as currently exercises sovereignty there today.

It's also the only reason Donnie Yen's character exists in Rogue One.

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