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Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

I'd be more concerned about Chinese financing of Hollywood. Nearly every big-budget production these days has Chinese co-producers. This leads to farcical episodes like the remake of Red Dawn featuring feeble North Korea as the villain rather than China as originally envisioned.

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This is no different than what Hollywood already does. E.g. demonizing conservative values as antithetical to a stable government (abortion, gay and lesbian rights, income discrepancy). I recall Hillary Clinton being interviewed by Terry Gross, where she was essentially charged with bigotry in reversing positions on gay marriage. Public sentiment changes in one way as a result of social and media influences, and it's not all in the direction of truth, justice and the American way. It's whomever is pulling the puppet strings (read: funding their personal agendas).

All film and media is propagandistic in some way. Just because you swing the needle in a different direction doesn't change that fact.

> All film and media is propagandistic in some way. Just because you swing the needle in a different direction doesn't change that fact.

To add to that, one of America's biggest exports is it's culture - see "Military Recruitment and Hollywood" https://youtu.be/N5xfBtD6rLY

America will not only send its soldiers to burn your country to the ground, years later they will also make a Hollywood movie about how bad those soldiers felt about it, and how much they suffered.

Russia was the villain in the original movie and China was on the US side (but were only briefly mentioned). Or do you mean "as originally envisioned for the remake"?

In the original, it was in fact strongly implied that the Warsaw Pact nuked China once war broke out.

Yes, I meant the original plans for the remake.

I think the Red Dawn example reflects more on the power of the Chinese box office than any financing concerns. It's just too big to ignore.

I'd say that from the outside it looks much the same as it always did, just with jingoism added for China as well as the US.

Funny you mention that, seems China is now further limiting Hollywood films within China and firing American actors:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/09/chinese-cinema-e...

And on the other side you have Occupied, a really good TV series where Norway stops to produce oil and the Russians starts an invasion of them with support from the EU. When I think about a country invading another for oil, there's always a name that comes to my mind, and it's not the one that appears on the series.

The reason is not that much about nationalism or soft-power. Filmmakers want to make money, and when you have a big enough consumer market filmmakers avoid controversial topics to get a chance to capture it.

Part of me thinks that competing propaganda might actually be salutary.

It's not like Hollywood is currently controlled by America. ;-)

You don’t have to watch those? If million+ Chinese like it though what’s the problem?

If Hollywood can no longer do in-your-face American propaganda then the end is nigh, indeed.

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