Censorship Lift for “V for Vendetta” Shocks China | Hacker News Reader

Censorship Lift for “V for Vendetta” Shocks China

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128 pointsmtgx92 comments

Perhaps the censors believed its topic was aimed at Britain, or the West, and didn't look hard at its (arguably distorted) philosophic viewpoint against fascist totalitarianism. I haven't seen the whole movie (prefer to keep my memories of the graphic novel intact, and I trust that when Alan Moore says it strayed from his vision, it strayed).

The Italians allowed a film version of Ayn Rand's "We the Living" to be produced because they believed it was a biting criticism of Soviet Russia, before someone realized its philosophic disposition was anti-totalitarianism. Could be sort of the same thing...

>The Italians allowed a film version of Ayn Rand's "We the Living" to be produced because they believed it was a biting criticism of Soviet Russia, before someone realized its philosophic disposition was anti-totalitarianism. Could be sort of the same thing...

And why would "the Italians" have a problem with either praise of Soviet Russia or anti-totalitarianism? They are a democracy, you know, and they have both millions of people pro and against Soviet Russia (the communist party was huge in Italy), and pro and against totalitarianism.

That said, knowing Ayn Rand, the film would be mostly pro-neoliberal totalitarianism of "special" individuals...

> "And why would "the Italians" have a problem with either praise of Soviet Russia or anti-totalitarianism?"

The movie in question was made in 1942, during the reign of Mussolini and his facists.

Yes, I omitted that detail, it was foremost in my mind though.

Isn't it obvious how omitting this detail --that he talks of a 70 year old movie-- changes the whole, err, picture?

Probably because he's referring to the 1942 version (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035130/), during which time Italy was not a democracy.

Because when Ayn Rand was produced, Italy was not a democracy - it was under the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini.

It became famous thanks to internet movement that did not have much to do with the movie (or the book) in the first place...

Uh... I don't know about that, the movie was pretty famous/well viewed well before anonymous showed up. It was a big Hollywood production after all. Produced in the still trending vein of "lets make comic books into movies" fad.

In the context of why a country would want to sensor the content, the fact that it was adopted by anonymous is very significant.

Sure, it was a "big Hollywood production", but the use of the Guy Fawkes masks as representing anonymity is not something to brush off, nor overlook.

Not really. The people who refer to it as the "V mask" have it more or less right; this is about people who want to feel dark and edgy like a nineties anti-hero. Most of the people who use this symbol nowadays have little if any clue what Guy Fawkes did, and would likely be so horrified if they knew that they'd find another mask.

"It became famous thanks to internet movement"

The internet movement revived its fame, it was a very successful comic and movie well-before Anon took up the mask for Chanology.

Sorry about the downvote! mouse click error!

The movie is much better than the graphic novel!

I suspect it was an error on the part of a programming director at the network, and that it will probably cost them their job. To my knowledge, China hasn't taken any steps towards freedom of speech and this would be a pretty weird way for them to start.

TFA mentions that "Xi Jinping assumed office as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China on November 15th and he may have brought a more liberal attitude with him"...

Time will tell, I guess.

Somehow I doubt this. Only a few days ago when the news of school shooting broke out, China had a similar incident a day later where a man stabbed/injured 22 children. However, that story was quickly snuffed and the only place you could find out about it was on China's twitter (weibo). I doubt one man could easily hand over the reigns of the media.

How do you know it actually happened and that it was not just a false rumor spread on social media?

At least in China, the "people" network is usually more trustworthy than the major media outlets. I can understand from the western perspective that we should be doubting social media first. People were posting pictures of the injured children. It's possible that the photos were doctored, but I doubt anyone would go to great lengths doing it. Also, when you stab 22 children, I'm sure it will be big local news at least...

> I can understand from the western perspective that we should be doubting social media first.

Should we? I have never seen a situation where social media were any less than an order or two of magnitude more trustworthy than traditional outlets.

Really? (with regard to in the west) Most of the social network 'news' I see is total crap. The stuff of chain-mails, rumour and heresay. When a major story breaks in the west the traditional media, despite biases in one way or another, seem to have the same pace and at least a much information.

Plus, I know who to blame when the information is wrong if it comes from a traditional outlet

I guess it depends what you categorize as social media. I think bloggers also fall into the social media camp. There's a very thin line between bloggers and journalists. Would you say the bloggers on huffington post talk chain-mails and heresy? I think in China the big name bloggers are probably equally respected as any journalist would be.

I'm slightly doubtful that someone would create a fake scene of 22 kids who got stabbed, for the purposes of social media juice.

>Would you say the bloggers on huffington post talk chain-mails and heresy?

Huffington Post? That's the worst kind of BS blogging and bad journalism. If HP's your idea of "social media", then they are far worse than traditional media...

I tend to agree with pretoriusB re the HuffPo. I also think bloggers/the new 'blogger-journalist' are more suited to investigative and opinion pieces rather than the breaking news o the day. Certainly you are right that there is a fine line between blogging and journalist.

With regard to 22 children stabbed, I agree that I don't think someone has made this up. But this is in china, not in the west, and as other posters have noted and I tend to agree having spent some time in china (well.. A couple kf weeks) that social media >> their state outlets. There are numerous instances of weibo being used to circumvent state censorship, despite being censored itself- the enterprising Chinese netizens use alliteration and 'read between the lines' to overcome this.

You have never seen a "chemical trails used to control thought", "revolutionary air fueled engine" and "this guy is sick now and needs blood before May 1999" on social media?

"At least in China, the "people" network is usually more trustworthy than the major media outlets"

Is it? When last I checked, the Chinese government paid tens of thousands of shills to post propaganda on blogs and forums.

I don't think the order would be "everybody is free to broadcast everything they want from now on", these things take time. An actual incident is an actual incident, a fantasy film is just that: a fantasy. Also, reactions to live events are much more "automatic" than broadcasting a film released years ago and that has, likely, cleared a number of censorship checks at high levels.

Interesting, I didn't know that story was buried. People have been advocating downplaying the role of the killer in the recent Kindergarten massacre and focusing on the victims in the fear that the attention paid to the killer would promote copycats. However, burying the whole Kindergarten story was not suggested.

Maybe it was suppressed but not for nefarious reasons?

Probably part of the reason that these attacks take place is due to the desire of the perpetrator to rip a big hole in peoples comfortable everyday existence. A response to this is to suppress news of these attacks. In a western democracy this is not really an option. I'm not saying that I think that these events should not be reported, but they are massively sensationalised by western media and this is not always necessarily helpful in the long run as it glorifies these acts in the eyes of future potential perpetrators when they see the impact they could have on public consciousness.

I don't want government censorship of the media, but I'm also not comfortable with the way the media behaves, speaking as a citizen of the UK. I don't know what the solution is to balance the two extremes.

Why must there always be a pessimistic view towards China on matters like this?

This is not a programming error. News of this programming to be aired had been circulating on the net several days prior to the actual airing around various forums and weibo. People have taken screenshots of the official CCTV6 scheduling of V at least two days before airing. Hence if it was actually a mistake it would have been taken down already.

I am pro China no doubt and it just saddens me that most views towards China must always carry a doubting overtone. If something good is happening, we as Chinese people applaud it. We sincerely wish the West to do the same, rather than passing off every positive change that China is making as mistakes.

Perhaps I'm reading into your comment too much, in which case I apologize.

Perhaps we are all reading into the matter too much...China isn't as horrid as how Western media portral them.

> China isn't as horrid as how Western media portral them.

There's definitely a misconception in the west in this regard. I've lived 2 years in China, and I was surprised to learn how much freedom the common Chinese citizen has, in some instances even more compared to westerners.

In specific to this post, there is a lot of "dissident" cultural productions freely available. To just take an example of a recent movie that comes to my mind right now: "Let The Bullets Fly", a comedy-action where a Robin Hood-type thief tries to rob a village ruled by a criminal ruthless kingpin, supported by a corrupt governor. (spoiler alert) at the end, the hero organizes a militia, distributes guns to the entire village and takes over the village. It is absolutely clear this is a satire over current Chinese politics affairs, yet it was released as a major movie in cinemas everywhere.

Figures like Ai Weiwei only perpetuate this misunderstanding that China is some kind of North Korea, when in reality there's already a lot of "challenging" going on.

A movie about villagers rising up to overthrow a ruthless capitalist and his running dog governor? Yeah that'll never fly in communist china.

The point of my post was the censors allowing a movie that challenges the government.

Regarding your comment, you could read more about the Wukan protests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wukan_protests

Me thinks, perhaps, because in the West, knowledge of Tiananmen Square wasn't suppressed, and knowledge that knowledge of Tiananmen Square was suppressed in China is also not suppressed. Since there hasn't been a real change in Chinese governance since, there is no reason for the West to believe that when something is broadcast it makes its way into public view because of protected rights, as opposed to deliberate allowance, or simple negligence.

Actually, ironically, knowledge of the Tiananmen Square WAS indeed suppressed in the west. What we know is the single guy standing in front of the tanks. What we in the west did not know is that, in fact, the great majority of protesters were workers being oppressed by the "free-market" reforms being implemented at the time. In other words, the protests were basically against the oppression caused by the new westernized-style economy.

This was (is) suppressed in the western media because it goes against our narrative that protesters were fighting for democracy, when in fact they were protesting against the oppression created by the same system that we so much value.

EDIT: I forgot to include sources. Check the book "What Does China Think?" by Mark Leonard, and look for essays by Cui Zhiyuan, a Chinese philosopher who was part of the Tiananmen protests.

The "free-market" reforms being instituted at the time were the shedding of responsibilities of the Chinese state by "privatizing" state-constructed factories via the (often secret) sale of the factories to party members, in other words they went from statism to crony-nepotism. The workers were unaware that these sales were going on and that their state jobs were no longer guaranteed, nor were they part of the public pension system, but effectively serfs to regional power brokers of the party.

Transparency, end of state-party corruption, and the guarantees of political and economic freedom were pretty much what I remember being called for at the time during the news coverage. Tank man was right at the end just before everything went off the air, and has stuck in people's minds because he was just a dude coming back from shopping who decided he'd had enough.

You remember wrong. It was and is reported as pro-democracy protests, that were crushed by Deng Xiao Ping.

These were the seven demands drafted by the students in Beijing (from Wikipedia):

1. Affirm as correct Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom; 2. Admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong; 3. Publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members; 4. End the ban on privately run newspapers and stop press censorship; 5. Increase funding for education and raise intellectuals' pay; 6. End restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing 7. Provide objective coverage of students in official media.

I remember a very poignant image of a bunch of Chinese students building a replica of Lady Liberty.

Can you explain why this would have been the case if all they were concerned about was crony-nepotism and redistribution of profits or whatever it is you're saying.

If that's directed at my comments, then I wasn't stating they were protesting against the party-aristocracy, just that the "free-market" reforms were not free-market reforms, but the transfer of industrial ownership from the state directly to party members. I was taking exception to the definition of "free-market" as something that was neither free, nor a market.

Exactly my point... That's what we saw in the west (that's what the western media focused on), because it neatly fits the narrative of capitalism-as-freedom of our mainstream media. According to the sources I referenced above the educated students were actually a minority who joined the protests later. The huge majority (which was not the focus of the media) was made of peasants and factory workers pissed at the reforms.

I am curious about your viewpoint.

From my time as an economist working on trade in Asia, I always found it funny that most people have a fear or frustration with China because they are communist. However, having studied a good deal of the inner workings of the economy, my frustration with China is that they still claim communism, when they are actually more capitalist, albeit under a more controlling political system than most capitalist systems.

Out of curiosity, did the movie air with subtitles or over-dub, and do you know if all the translations were true to their original?

From the article: "Apart from the film title, its content had not been edited, as pointed out by the China Digital Times."

I imagine if there were changes (even if they were small) would have been called out.

Maybe they're coming around to a more effective western technique:

"we're good guys" facade combined with stealth oppression :-P

I kid.. I kid...

But really you don't kid. You're only afraid of being labeled a crackpot in a tinfoil hat. This is what western media has done, subtle propaganda has made certain words like conspiracy sound crazy. When our history books teach us that conspiracies have been part of humanity for as long back as we can find documents for it. Most likely before.

I kid, I kid...

The problem is in my opinion, that the "conspiracy" websphere is a quite a closed circle. They either go full blown "bow to our UFO overlords", or nothing. I wish there were a few in-between media outlets that had a decent level of sanity and look & feel more linkable for "non believers".

I have a rule of thumb these days. Anything crazy that I hear the military, NSA or FBI are doing - I take it as being true, rather than a "conspiracy theory".

I think I have a much higher chance of being right than not, in most cases. So I'd rather think like that by default, especially with many former "crazy conspiracy theories" being confirmed as true by more recent leaks and whistleblowers.

I think most people still think the opposite, though, so even if something big gets uncovered, they won't really believe it to be true "in their hearts".

So you really believe that the government is setting up concentration camps around the country, is going to use the military domestically to round up guns and all dissenters, and Obama is going to seize dictatorial control of the USA then hand sovereignty over to the New World Order?

Maybe we just hear different conspiracies but I'm pretty positive that the conspiracy nonsense regarding the government shouldn't be taken as "true by default".

Don't forget the Area 52 where they combine alien and human DNA.

Right, because Area 51 is just a decoy.

The fact that you are "pretty positive" about that only means that you are the kind of person who is too lazy to investigate the facts. You probably still believe that JFK was killed by a crazed lone gunman, that Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise to FDR, and that 9/11 was NOT an inside job. In other words, you are the kind of complacent rube that makes it all possible, thanks a lot.

Well, then you can read the actual serious intellectuals and researchers like Chomsky, for example. Read "Manufacturing Consent", no ufo stuff there just the real deal. There is extensive literature and documentation of what is really going on, but its not going to be part of the narrative, you have to look for it. Assange's new book is another example. There are tons of authors, just follow the thread. Note: HN, any other reading material you would recommend to me or to stfu?

Chomsky is decidedly not a conspiracy theorist. One of the main points in "Manufacturing Consent" is that you can have a healthy production of propoganda without any conspiratorial relationship between the media and government.

At the same time, Chomsky ain't dumb. Of course powerful people look out for their own interests; that leads to an overlap in goals with other powerful people, and a defensive/paranoid stance towards those you wield power over. Just like a lot of analog clocks hanging on a wall will synchronize, so will they.

Does it have to be explicitly expressed and planned to be a conspiracy? Nah. And if people get sorted and filtered based on how well they internalized rationalizations and outright lies, that's your "conspirational relationship" right there. Though "the government" is hardly the driving force here -- have you even read Chomsky?

But yes, Chomsky isn't a pussy and Chomsky pays attention. But what he points out are conspiracies in effect, and they are every bit as sinister as some James Bond BS you could come up with; it's just that "none of this is controversial", no paranoia required.

> Does it have to be explicitly expressed and planned to be a conspiracy?

That's pretty much the definition of "conspiracy."

> And if people get sorted and filtered based on how well they internalized rationalizations and outright lies, that's your "conspirational relationship" right there.

No, that's not a conspiracy. It might be something else, but it's not a conspiracy.

> Though "the government" is hardly the driving force here -- have you even read Chomsky?

I read "Manufacturing Consent."

"No, that's not a conspiracy. It might be something else, but it's not a conspiracy."

It has the same effect as one. And "conspiracy theory" is usually used to wave away bringing the actual dynamics up. If the "conspirators" aren't even aware of it that just makes it worse, so how is "it's something different" any solace? Yeah, it's the same thing, but worse. It's like a conspiracy, but it requires intervention because it's not one, and insight will not end it.

"I read "Manufacturing Consent."

Which is about big business routing around democracy as a potential problem via propaganda.

Here's a quote from the man I transcribed from him speaking:

What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect - they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible, and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500. You just read what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the government.

Not reading material as such, but i feel the need to shout out democracynow.org for some independent, intelligent news (Chomsky is often a guest). PS they are seeking donations!

“Trust no one! The minute God crapped out the third caveman, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them! ”

― Col. Hunter Gathers, OSI (venture brothers)

But to be honest I imagine that the vast majority of so-called conspiracy is just like seeing a face on the moon - we're highly complex social analysers and modern civilisation is at least an order (but more like several orders) of magnitude bigger/more complex than the machinery that has stood us in good stead for however many generations. Hence - we see a ghost in the machine pulling the strings when really "The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business" as is so eloquently put in Network.

I guess the biggest problem is the consistent track record of "the government" lying to the people while "word on the street" had it right. The long history from "smoking is harmless" to "there are WMDs in Iraq" has created the impression, that government is not working for the people but against the people.

That might be a wrong impression for most of the services government performs, but in other high profile areas (e.g. "security theater") these situations are set to repeat.

A lot of conspiracy stuff is definitely coming from the mentally disturbed part of society.

But on the other hand, we have to be careful. It is absolutely the case that certain groups conspire for various activities: Lenin & the Bolsheviks, Paul Revere and the US revolutionaries, the Praetorian Guards in ancient Rome, just to name a few. Pertaining more to the usual conspiracy fodder, reviewing the Church Committee reports on the CIA (c.f. "United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States" in Wikipedia) does not give great comfort to people who would like to ignore conspiracies. They happen, but they aren't aliens from the Zonker Dimension in snake form.

I think you will find this interesting:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/14zlhf/what_are_s...

Actually you have nailed it. And I kid not.

You're not kidding at all. It amuses me how often I hear people rant about other countries' (esp. China) propaganda... and then cite Fox News.

When I was in China I noticed that English language versions Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm were freely available in bookstores. The educated elite seems to be allowed to read or watch things that the Chinese government would surpress from getting into the hands of the masses.

The Chinese translations are also widely available. However, I noticed that The Principles of Newspeak was removed from the Nineteen Eighty-Four, when the last time I browsed a copy of it in a bookstore.

I also bought a translated Animal Farm, with very detailed explanation that maps each paragraph to the historical counterpart in the Soviet Union, several years ago.

IMHO, people here usually take these books as some 'foreign' talks, rather than a serious argument to the reality.

"The Principles of Newspeak was removed from the Nineteen Eighty-Four"

This does not surprise me; one of the themes of Chinese government propaganda is the superiority of the simplified writing system, and so I imagine that negative treatments of any simplification of communication would be censored. I saw a Chinese movie a while back, where the king commented on how difficult communication was because of the large number of traditional Hanzi symbols (he also commented that all he wanted was a unified China, which prompted to main character to abandon his attempted assassination of the king).

The movie was Hero, a 2002 movie starring Jet Li. I tended to get a different feeling from that line. The nameless protagonist had asked for calligraphy from his opponent. However, the protagonist did not ask for any of the existing ways to write "Sword", but rather for a new expression of it. When it was written, the protagonist spent a sleepless night examining it, learning every detail and every symbol behind the writing of this single word. It is in this context that the king interrupts the story and says how silly it is to have so many ways of writing it.

Rather than being a statement of how it should be, I took it to be a statement of ignorance on the part of the king. The king did not understand how there could be subtleties in words, and wished only for simplification of the language, rather than looking for the meaning behind existing words.

I agree. Although it has been some years since I have seen the movie, I believe that near the end of the movie, the King of Qin finally understood the meaning behind the "sword" character.

Wait... That's historically true, isn't it? The Qin Dynasty unified China's writing system in an effort to unite the disparite cultures (not to censor them).

Lets not confuse history and propaganda.

I interpreted the statement as propaganda in favor of the simplified writing system, which originated with Mao Zedong's government in the 20th century. Additionally, it is worth noting that the important of Chinese unification is part of modern Chinese propaganda, and that separatist movements (e.g. in Tibet) are routinely oppressed; Taiwan is a hot-button issue for the same reason.

Traditional was already unified. Simplified was a simplification (to increase literacy levels), there is no evidence that simplified was a newspeakesqe version of chinese

It has nothing to do with Tibet nor Taiwan.

I'm Chinese and I don't think it's a signal for relaxing censorship or something else. Just yesterday, People's Daily, the core newspaper of CCP, published a critique whose title is "Internet is not a place out of the law". Many Chinese netizen think it's a signal for tightening the censorship.

I understand these titles as that netizens should not propagate the rumours of corrupted local officials. I'm afraid that the only affairs that matter here are several cases where the anti-corruption inspection was initiated by social-media leaks.

I live in china. I watched this movie last night from major video site in china, and I was shocked deeply by it's availability. Facebook , Twitter, Youtube.... All good stuff still are not accessible . anyway good sign though.

Any insight from a native?

Anyone who is "shocked" already saw this film via torrent years ago.

Anyone who didn't know V before won't care anyway.

it's a meh exaggerated by social media.

It's the censorship lift that shocks (as in 'surprises', not 'offends') people, not the film itself.

Yeah, to put this in a USA perspective, it would be like ABC/CBS showing a single naked female breast on primetime TV and being "okay" with it. Usually someone would be fired for that...

Not about V for Vendetta, but my when my wife saw Animal Farm for the first time a couple of weeks ago she thought it was pretty accurate.

V can be interpreted any way you want depending on who you think the bad guys are. The Chinese government was established by revolutionaries after all.

Orwell had direct experience of Soviet-directed communist repression in Spain as a member of Trotsky-influenced POUM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

However all governments are established by a revolution of some form or another.

Tell that to Canada.

Um... What about Australia? Canada? Barbados?

At least a dozen former British colonies established their independence gradually and peacefully, with the willing cooperation of the UK. No fighting, animosity, or anything that could be remotely considered a "revolution".

(Now of course, not ALL former colonies separated peacefully: India, The United States, etc. But there are plenty of examples on both sides.)

And how about Iceland?

You're counting country numbers instead of population numbers. China, India, and the US are all high-pop places, each supported by a major river system.

Movie censorship is pretty strong in china -- even movies that have "bad" endings need to be revised before they can be shown there. Although I'm not a native, I do know that hordes of people take trips down to Hong Kong all the time, merely for the purposes of watching movies. All the stories of China remind me of Orwell's 1984.

maybe you should go there... the stories are mostly western propaganda

I do go there, maybe once every few years. Went there 2 years ago. Those stories are not western propaganda. Some of those stories are even deeper than western propaganda could provide. I've heard a dozen other smaller stories from relatives of mine who live there -- it's more telling when you hear it from a first person perspective. There are lots of news stories that never even make it out of the country.

if random relatives know these stories they are hardly covered up.

Heaps of chinese news doesn't make it out of the country, because it's written in chinese, or published in Chinese (only) news outlets. It's not a cover up.

It's not that the stories are western propaganda, it is that China is a really big place, and there is no uniform system of oppression, nor of censorship. Really, this is not much different from the USA, where laws can vary widely between states: I carry a pocket knife around in the state where I live, but I was nearly imprisoned for carrying that same knife in New York City when I visited family there. Likewise with China; in some regions, the citizens are more oppressed than in others.

From a Bayesian perspective, it is unlikely that the broadcasting of V conveyed any nontrivial hints, given that the authority in this country has little known records for releasing a signal through CCTV-6(, the Movie Channel of CCTV,) before any changes in ideology, since the first day CCTV-6 began broadcasting.

If a critique essay to this movie appeared in one of the newspapers with official backgrounds, it would be a totally different story.

Damn! I missed one of my fav movies. I've been living here for only 4 months and I'm shocked to hear they would allow for such a "theme" in their media.

Someone probably broke in and forced them to play it on their "backup national channel"

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