At MercatorNet, King’s College professor Robert Carle discusses China and Hollywood. Disney boasted that few people had watched their Kundun film on an extended apology tour (his words) as reported by Mind Matters.
Business strategy
Is this a good business strategy? It gets worse:
By the turn of the century, Hollywood directors and producers had learned not to bring up issues that offended the Communist Chinese (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square). They had also established a consistent lobbying procedure for obtaining China’s permission for their films. International distributors interact with Chinese film bureau officials early in the film’s life cycle. Before a film is released in China, American studios must first satisfy layers of Chinese bureaucrats.
Chinese censors
Schwartzel tells dozens of tales of how Chinese censors have altered American films. Some of the adjustments were modest, while others necessitated the complete rewrite of whole screenplays. A scene in the 2015 film Pixels in which the Great Wall is destroyed was cut. (Instead, the Taj Mahal is blown up.) The Japanese and Taiwanese flags were deleted from Tom Cruise’s jacket in the Chinese version of Top Gun. Tom Cruise chases baddies through the streets of Shanghai in the original version of Mission Impossible III from 2006. At China’s request, sequences depicting Shanghai’s ubiquitous clotheslines were removed from the film.
Did you subscribe to our newsletter?
It’s free! Click here to subscribe!
Source: Mind Matters
