Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway122916 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com