China and Hollywood: Our Entertainment for Their Dollar
I've said it several times over the course of my college career in these papers: I like movies a lot. If you're counting, I believe that's the fourth time I've mentioned this in one of your papers Professor Reppert! This time, we're going to talk about China and the effect that the country has on our entertainment.
It wasn't until 11th or 12th grade that I heard that China is a country that we shouldn't like as free, American citizens. Of course when I was in elementary school, China was just another country and North Korea was the country we were all scared of. Now that I'm essentially an adult, China's the new place to hate to I guess I can hop on the bandwagon.
Just a reminder: you probably can't read this if you're in China.
So as a film buff, I'm always trying to keep up with the box office statistics, what movies are coming out and when, the new up-and-coming director, and so on. It's an entertaining medium that has it's own fantasy sport! The news will tell you that movies are dying but don't listen to them, it's just the concession prices bringing them down.
One thing that I learned as I delved into the 'film critic society' (or the online communities where people argue all of the time, same thing really) is that China is really important to the film industry and Hollywood. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. I understood that another market for viewers is another market to make money, but is China really that important? I understood that China has the largest population of any country in the world, but is it really that important? To any question concerning China's importance, the answer was yes. I guess I had the understanding that China worked similarly to India or Korea, where most of their entertainment was self-contained and produced 'in-house'. India has Bollywood, Korea has.... Koreawood? Nonetheless, these country's interests don't really resonate with the product we produce in Hollywood, so our Western movies don't do great there unless it's something like Pacific Rim.
I knew Hollywood was corrupt, but I didn't really understand how much we cater to China. That's news you don't really hear about unless you're inside a Hollywood studio. For instance, did you know that only 34 major American films are allowed in China each year? Of course, a studio can avoid this restriction by adhering to China's film quotas, such as, "not presenting China as the villain," or, "filming on location in China," or, "using a predetermined number of Chinese actors." These are things we don't think about when we watch the movies here, because we don't know about the backroom dealings to get the film into China. "Oh that's a really cool character," you may say. The only reason that character is that character is because the film studio wanted the movie to get into China. Little did you know in the original script, that character was extremely supportive of the Tibetan independence movement but was changed to support Occupy Wall Street because of Chinese mandates.
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| Chinese insignia's (left) swapped for Korean ones (right) in Red Dawn (2012) |
Something similar happened in the film Red Dawn (2012) wherein the main conflict comes from North Korea rather than China. The original screenplay had a Chinese army as the invading force, but a last minute change allowed the film to be shown in China.
Possibly most ridiculously, China has banned Winnie the Pooh. Yes, the happy yellow bear with the red shirt to small for his honey filled belly. Why? Because of the resemblance to their President, Xi Jinping.
Most of this comes down to China not wanting to appear as the bad guy in film media. I read somewhere this is called 'soft power'. Whereas 'hard power' is the ability for an invading force to capture an enemy, 'soft power' is the control without conflict. This comes in the form of censorship and, you guessed it, controlling popular media, such as the internet, television, and film.
Slightly off-topic, but as a person who plays online games, this may help you understand the lengths that China goes to keep it's image favorable. In online games and even some social media, simply typing certain banned phrases like, "Tiananmen Square," "Republic of China," and, "Dalai Lama" can get a Chinese internet user tracked by the Chinese government and internet shut off. There is an official list of banned phrases here. There is also an official curfew for minors, limiting them to 90 minutes of video game activity per day.
One last thing: China has a blacklist of people not allowed in the country. This list includes Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and even Brad Pitt (though he visited recently with Angelina Jolie). What I'm getting at is if you're a small-fame actor who is trying to get a push with a bigger studio, but you are blacklisted by China, you may have trouble getting a gig anywhere in Hollywood.
Nonetheless, I'm sure this will all sort itself out at some point. It always does.
