Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, April 08, 2011

There's no going back

The culture police have limited the subject matter allowed in movies and on television in China — once again. This time the censors are worried about the past. No more time travel to pre-revolutionary eras where life wasn't all bad. Only the Party, it seems, is allowed to fictionalize history. Oh, and by the way, no more cinematic versions of the Four Great Classical Novels.

Remind everyone what George Orwell said. "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past." So, no more time travel.

"No more time-travel drama," authority says it disrespects history

Now there’s an interesting trend in China’s film and television industry: more and more time-travel themed dramas are made and aired. In these time-travel based TV plays, usually the protagonist is from the modern time and for some reasons and via some means, travels through time and all the way back to the ancient China where he/she will constantly experience the "culture shock" but gradually get used to it and eventually develop a romance in that era. Though obviously the Chinese audience is found of this genre of shows, the country’s authority -General Bureau of Radio, Film and Television, to be exact, is not happy about this trend and calls a halt to the making of this type of drama…

The Television Director Committee [said], "The time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore."...

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Labels: China, history, political culture