Censorship in China

By almost every metric imaginable, China is a huge country -- and its government works around the clock to control the flow of domestic and international information. As Hollywood studios become increasingly dependent on profits from the Chinese market, they're forced to obey China's exacting guidelines regarding what can or can not be shown on screen. In today's episode, the guys explore the evolution of China's censorship regime -- and how it's changing the world of blockbuster film.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt Our. Co host Noel is on
an adventure. They call me Ben. We're joined as always
with our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh, Matt,
this one is for our fellow film buffs in the crowd,

(00:47):
and it's something you and I have talked about in
the past. We talked about it with Mission Control a
little bit off air. UM. I hope this isn't revealing
too much, but as long time listeners know you yourself
as well as Paul have backgrounds in the world of film.
How I got my college degree shooting some video for

(01:10):
a couple of professors. Yeah, when you get a degree
like that, at least here in Georgia Georgia State University,
check it out. Um. You do a lot of film history,
a lot of just studying film, analyzing film, Uh, understanding
how it's made and why it's made that way, And
this topic that we're covering today is not something that

(01:32):
was in the curriculum in two thousand three four. Yeah, yeah,
and it's but it's something that was in the cards.
It just hadn't reached this point of uh, conspiracy, I
would argue. So, if you, like us, are film buffs,
then you've probably heard about a growing phenomenon in the

(01:53):
world of cinema film now despite covid is going international
like never before for at a at a continually accelerating pace.
And also if you have been a fellow conspiracy realist
for for a good amount of time, you're probably, I
would guess, concerned about the dangers of censorship. And we're

(02:15):
reaching a paradox point here, fellow cinophiles, as films of
every genre and level, from blockbuster movies to independent critics Darling's,
as they spread across this planet like never before, they're
also being actively censored in a way that has not
ever occurred on this scale. They're being kept from the

(02:36):
largest single viewing public in the entirety of human history.
No coffeats, no asterix. That's what's happening today. We're traveling
to China, so here are the facts first. First things first,
whenever we do episodes like these like the Great Firewall,
which we did earlier, and stories about the weaker population

(03:00):
western China, we always, uh, Matt and me and sometimes
Paul talk about whether or not we're going to be
able to get through customs in mainland PRC. But you know,
sometimes we're joking, sometimes we're not joking, but it's it's
it is an important question because China is huge by

(03:23):
any metric, China is huge. When we talk about population,
China is the biggest dog on the block. Uh. In
our one of our previous episodes, we quoted the population
at one point three billion. Now just a few years later,
it's home to one point four zero to billion people.

(03:43):
And a lot of those folks are just like us.
They love movies. M Yeah, especially American movies. When it
comes to American culture, just there's a cashe it's I
think has something to do with the freedom that we
have historically enjoyed here, right. Uh, you could do anything
in America, and when you're watching a movie that's based

(04:06):
in America or is American made, there's that same kind
of anything could happen, but excitement, I would say that
exists there, and culture has been one of America's biggest
exports since films have been a thing, and then good god,
television comes along. That's a whole other thing. Really, any
American media, we just export that stuff, and we're good

(04:28):
at at putting little bits of propaganda in there, as
you know. Yes, yeah, there is a valid argument to
be made. And I ruffle feathers when I say this sometimes,
but ever since the post World War two economic boom,
two of the most powerful exports of the United States
have been culture and war, and they both have done

(04:51):
a lot for the US at the expense of others.
So yeah, there's power in this. All culture presented to
an unfamiliar audience is inherently propagandistic. Right, It's like a
it's like a macro version of a person. Social media,
countries and cultures show you what they want you to see, right,

(05:15):
And this this is uh, this is strange because the
effect has been huge. But again it's it's fairly and
the long span of things, it's it's fairly recent, and
in the case of US films in China, it's even
more of a recent thing. China didn't really open up
officially two American films until around n Warner Brothers, through

(05:40):
a series of like nepotistic negotiations, was able to air
a film called The Fugitive in China and it did. Yeah, yeah,
I liked it. It did pretty well. Uh. Old WB
made about three million dollars US and that is not

(06:00):
big money to them in but it is considered a
good sign for the future. And then just three years later,
about three years later, Hollywood immediately screws up hard, at
least in China's perspective. Yeah, the two movies Kundoon k

(06:23):
U N d U N and a little thing called
Seven Years in Tibet with Old Brad Pitt, two films
that were let's say, not appreciated. Uh. And it has
to do with the way the film's portrayed Tibet and
stuff going on in Tibet. And we've talked about this

(06:44):
before on the show. Uh, well, you know, we haven't
really gone into full detail. I don't think ben on
the complications that exist into Beet versus China, um and
just historically what's been going on. But yeah, these movie
they did not take keenly to know and for people
familiar with that situation, the official perception of the Chinese

(07:09):
government for that sentence he just said about tibetan China.
For them, it would be like saying, you know what
about that situation between Wyoming and the United States. Like,
the Chinese position is very much that, Uh, Tibet is
an autonomous region, but very much part of my mainland China.

(07:31):
To say otherwise is anathema. The same applies to Taiwan,
which we'll get to in a moment. Uh. This is
this is just to be clear Chinese censorship boards. This
is not us saying saying any stance of our own there.
This is just the reality of the situation. That's just
one China policy. Full stuff. That's what it's called. That

(07:55):
is what it's called. So at first, the studios didn't
think this would the biggest deal ever. They didn't have
geopolitical considerations in mind when they were making these films.
They just thought they were good stories. They knew that
market and population trends indicated China could one day be

(08:16):
a big source of revenue for for cinema, but not
quite yet, And they said they sort of thought, you know,
it's not like we're going to make a bunch of
money there right now. Anyhow, Uh, this is sumption, Yeah,
this is sumption would overtime prove incorrect? As of just
China became officially the largest film market on the planet,

(08:41):
and a big part of that growth was the pandemic.
There were a couple of different factors here that moved
the timeline, so before the pandemic fully got into swing.
There's a resource firm called Ampere Analysis a mp E
r E if you want to look it up. They
projected China film market, uh would overtake, would overlap and

(09:04):
overshadow the US film market by two uh this year,
and now it expects China will remain the number one
market in the world four films and this kind of
media indefinitely because of the population and because the US
theatrical market, the market for actual films and movies is

(09:26):
declining and it's attempting to recover from the pandemic and
losing the ability to physically go to the movie theater.
But we'll see. I mean, that's gonna be one of
those things. Maybe there's gonna be a crazy resurgence in
people going back to the movies. I know, I've done
it a couple of times. Uh, but not the way
I used to. Yeah, and a lot of people had
similar experiences. The thing is, they're there several intervening variables here. Right.

(09:53):
The country of China as as a film market is
probably going to be making around thirteen point seven billion
a year in and the US will be a little
under eight billion. These are still billions. There's still a
lot of money at play, more so than you know,
most of most human brains can I would say all

(10:16):
human brains can adequately comprehend. Just think about the numbers
you may have heard in the news. These have been
international news stories, the amount of money that some of
the large Marvel movies have been raking in some of
the other large franchises. We're talking like Jurassic World. We're
talking profits in the billions now, not the millions. Uh.

(10:38):
Movie that was a smash hit would make several hundred million, Uh,
not that long ago, and now a billion at least
a billion is almost a benchmark now for some of
these major movies that get worldwide distribution exactly. And there
are other intervening variables at play. Like first, yes, we

(10:59):
mentioned COVID. It it hit both countries very hard on
multiple levels. And uh, and China has been doing some
pretty extreme things to tamp down COVID, especially in urban populations.
Their theaters were not unscathed either. China had seventy thousand

(11:20):
theaters that were shut down for months. All the theaters
in the US were shut down for a while. But
to your point, Matt, China seems to have bounced back
faster and now Hollywood, that's just I'm using potatomy here.
I'm just saying Hollywood to indicate all film production in
the US wherever it's based. It's hoping that these huge

(11:45):
films they spend a lot of money on can help
them recover those lost profits with the help of Chinese audiences.
But there's another factor. They're going to face a lot
of local competition. The govern a mint of China recognizes
the power of culture and information wars and propaganda, so

(12:06):
they want to bring their own voice, their own narrative
and perception to the globe. And that's why more and
more of China's box office hits are local productions, domestically
filmed and created nowadays, and this only accelerated during COVID,
when there were many there were far fewer Hollywood films

(12:29):
being released just overall, and this is yeah, this is
part of a larger plan. We're not even to the
crazy part yet. These are just the facts. We got
to introduce this journalist that I'm quite impressed with named
Eric Schwartzel. He is the author of a book called

(12:49):
Red Carpet, Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.
Get it red Carpet? Uh? I see you? So he's yeah,
and that book. Based on that book, he wrote an
article or several articles, I think for The Atlantic that
we're using as research for this. Yes, yeah, absolutely, so

(13:13):
shout out to Eric Schwartzel. Uh. He's saying in his book.
One of the things that we just highlighted. He said
his belief is that the government of China has watched
the machine of Hollywood, you know, basically sell America as
a concept to the globe, and now that government wants

(13:35):
to do the same. They want to leverage that power
of propaganda to continue expanding their presence on the international stage.
And we pulled a couple of quotes from him, especially
the ones that I think are striking because of their certitude.
So he says, quote, it comes to the point where

(13:55):
even on some of the biggest films that make tons
of money around the world, like a Fast and Furious
Home or a Marvel super Heroes movie. Getting into China
and making money there can mean the difference between profit
and loss. Yeah. Yeah, when you fund your movie for
several hundred million dollars because you packed it full of
some of the biggest stars that exist on the planet

(14:17):
right now, and every scene has the most insane special
effects you've ever seen, and it looks amazing and you
feel great when you watch it. Uh, it's still costs
several hundred million dollars. So if you if you don't
get you know, an extra one point, let's just say,
an extra six hundred million people to watch it, or
even you know, three hundred million people in the population

(14:39):
of China watching it, that's still going to make up
for uh, that potential between profit and loss. Man three.
I mean think about it. If you just get three
hundred and forty million people watching it in China, then
you have you have done the equivalent of getting every
single person in the United States to watch it. Like

(15:00):
it's numbers game. And you know, the stories may be fictional,
but those budgets are real. So this is uh, this
is a big, big deal, and this means that Hollywood
is increasingly dependent upon getting airtime in China. It's no
longer a nice thing that can help an executives year

(15:23):
in bonus, it's the way the company may survive. And
too many people, you know, and I see the validity
and this too many people. The argument is that's just
business as usual. You know, you go where your customers are.
But unfortunately that's only part of the game. There's a
complicating factor here. You can't, for instance, just go crack

(15:46):
some international distribution deal and get stuff they don't want
you to know, the movie playing in theaters across Shanghai
and Beijing. Instead, you have to go to the ultimate
arbiters of your film in that country, China's government censorship regime.
You have to gain from them the privilege of traversing

(16:07):
the great firewall of this information war. And this is
where the troubles begin. You're gonna pause for a word
from our sponsor. Maybe it's something from the Chinese Tourism Board,
and then we'll tell you more. Here's where it gets crazy.

(16:28):
All right, China is home to the largest film market
on the planet, but not just that. It's also home
to the largest censorship regime on the planet, at least
one of the largest censorship regimes. I think it is
the largest. Now it's certainly the most sophisticated. Like it
is scary good. Maybe we should talk a little bit

(16:51):
about that before we get straight to the film. Oh yeah,
there's a political scientist named Gary King who decided to
dig deep into this thing. Uh. He looked at Chinese
state censorship with two landmark studies where he was looking
at social media, and he concluded that China is the
quote most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented. WHOA,

(17:17):
that's strong, strong words there, Gary, But it does seem
to be that, at least with some of the stuff
we've been looking at this week. There really are internet police.
We joke about it sometimes as being a thing, you know,
that was such a running gag for a while here
in the early two thousands when we're having conversations been
but the Internet police in China it's a real thing.

(17:41):
We're talking about fifty thousand people potentially, or roughly, let's say,
oh yeah, yeah, and it's not just them, they're working
with other Communist Party members who hundreds of thousands strong,
potentially three hundred thousands strong, and that's not counting the
employees that then pry bit companies employee to also do

(18:02):
this kind of thing, because private companies have to employ
certain people to keep tabs on what the company is doing,
and basically they're the go betweens between the company and
the sensors. It's crazy to think about. Yeah, it's a
huge network. It is a vast, vast enterprise. And I
want to give a special shout out to just by

(18:23):
personal contacts on the Chinese mainland and in Taiwan, as
well as our fellow conspiracy realists who are either Chinese
nationals or based in the country. As we speak, you
won't hear this episode, well not officially, but you know,
you might have a very private network that helps you

(18:45):
tune in a vary networks. So yeah, so are maybe
anyhow the this this is true and there are two
points that stand out in Gary King's research. First, he said,
the infrastructure of this censorship regime is astonishingly effective. This

(19:08):
means that if if for instance, um Paul and Matt
are talking about something that might be you know, put
a bad taste in the censor's mouth and they post
about it on social media. Okay, Yeah, let's say let's
say we're talking about this special little meeting and training

(19:30):
that occurred in two thousand and eight when a large
group of film students and aspiring social media yeah, I guess,
I guess their celebrities in China. They came over and
they got first hand training from the United States Hollywood
film industry on how to export culture and how to

(19:52):
build stories that focus on that and export it to
other places. And if that were objectional, that left at
bad taste in the sensor's mouth, then what you would find,
just as King and his team found, is that those
posts that are objectionable have a plus percent chance of

(20:15):
being removed completely within twenty four hours. So there is
a great eye on one point for zero to billion
people and anything they might post. But there's a little
a little bit of good news because the same this
first study that it found that the government appears to

(20:39):
give people a little bit of wiggle room with online descent,
would talk in some trash you got, you got a
little bit of wiggle room there, maybe everybody has a
bad day, etcetera. What they really cracked down on is
stuff you're describing organization, movements, collective action. It depends on
where we were talking about that and how open of

(21:00):
a discussion we were having. Were we trying to get
other people to talk with us, were they talking with us,
were they sharing? Yeah, then it becomes a real issue
because we've talked about there are penalties, real legal penalties
for doing things. And I can't remember the phrase off
the time my head been, but it's like rabble rousing.
It's like an actual sense that you can get jail
time for. I think that's right. I think the translation

(21:22):
is rabble rousing. So you keep your rabble sedated folks. Yeah.
And in one of these Atlantic articles exploring King's work,
we find in an interview about these studies that he
believes there are two reasons for the latitude a little
bit of wiggle room with not being a happy He says, first,

(21:46):
if you allow some criticism, it's kind of like an
escape hatch, right, It lets off some steam and it
keeps that descent from growing more violent. People feel like
they are somehow satiated by being able to just get
it out. And then second, this lediacy is also helpful

(22:06):
to those in power because then you can figure out
what more than one person has a problem with, right,
so you can it's a common card Yes, yeah, that's true.
The Internet as a common card box and people are
reading what you write, so be very careful in that regard. Like, um,

(22:30):
it reminds me of the old joke on forums like
read it you will. Obviously, I keep eyes on a
lot of conspiratorial and fringe related forums, and one of
the things that always cracks me up is the metic
conspiracy that every time someone comes up in a forum
and says, hey, what are some conspiracy theories you think

(22:51):
are true? Uh, the ideas that they are being posted
by the FBI or some of the alphabet boys just
to figure it out. I don't know if that's true.
Do you love it? I hope it is. Do you
know how many times we've made posts like that? Oh? Man, yeah, no,
it's true. Well this okay, So we're saying this is

(23:12):
a powerful thing. It is real. It is ideologically objection
able to some people, but for the government in power
and China now the PRCUH, the idea is ideologically necessary.
This is seen as a preservation move for the stability

(23:34):
of the country as it stands and it applies to
film as well. We've got to introduce you to something
called SARFT, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. SARFT,
despite sounding like uh distant cousin of of the Noid,
is actually super powerful and pretty orwellian. They control the

(23:57):
content of all media cast in China, film, TV, radio,
the Internet, satellite, since all the films that would one
day be shown in China, domestic or foreign, are first
evaluated by this thing called the c f A or

(24:18):
China Film Administration. At the time, a lot of the
numbers I saw said the staff was somewhat small. We're
talking about thirty people. They've got a bunch of different backgrounds.
Some of them are, you know, from the film industry,
some are from the Communist Youth League, the Women's Federation
sort of. The rest are kind of a charkoutrie of

(24:40):
government departments or people from government departments, and they have
various areas of expertise and authority that they focus on.
There is a pretty small group that handles international co productions,
just like three or four people. Why are we guessing
at this, Well, the inner workings of SARFT are kind

(25:01):
of a black box. In many ways they're highly secret,
which has got to be in the past that had
to be super annoying to American filmmakers. There's lots you
can read about this. Again, we can't recommend that book
in the Atlantic articles enough. But uh, just having that
black box that you have to put all of your
ideas into as a filmmaker, someone who's going to try

(25:22):
and create media and get it in China, Um, not
knowing what is that's got to be crazy. Uh, difficult
to even wrap your mind around. But you think about
in the US, there are sensors that look at media.
There's the m p a A and other organizations like
that in the US that look at content and decide
if it's you know, to profane, or if it's profane

(25:44):
at a certain level, it'll get a rating or something
it will be prevented from being shown in certain places.
But often I guess there's other content stuff, right, anything
that's sexual, anything what that's really it? Is it too
sexual or the word too violent? Yeah? Or depictions increasingly

(26:04):
depictions of addiction, including things like cigarette smoking might set
your rating a little bit more mature. There was one
film as about a tornado. Maybe his Twister or something.
They got demed on ratings for depictions of violent weather,
which I thought was hilarious. Yeah, true story, I do
not remember. Yeah, but but yeah, gonna we're gonna talk.

(26:30):
We're gonna talk a little bit more to about about
the differences here. But I love the way you're setting
this up, because, yes, countries, for the most part, the
big film producing countries, all have these kinds of rating systems,
and they're they're made with good intentions, just as China's
government would argue its own censorship board is made with

(26:53):
you know, uh, they're doing what is good for the public.
And if you are a parent, then you to totally understand,
especially when your kids were younger, it's helpful to know
if there's gonna be some wild traumatic stuff in a film.
You don't want to have to explain the movie seven
to uh seven year old child, you know what I mean.

(27:16):
You don't want to go in there without having at
least some knowledge of what happens. Again, but their ages
in the name. Yes, So despite the fact that for
a while the censorship regime, this you know, body of
rules was a black box, Western studios and filmmakers quickly

(27:37):
learned acquired a spider sense of what to avoid. They
know that the government doesn't hesitate to punish studios that
step out a line that address topics Chin to find
subjectionable or embarrassing or uh. The phrase they use is
topics that distort history or distort the truth about China.

(28:00):
They also will clamp down on any events, and again
these are works of fiction for the most part, any
events that highlight things the government does not want the
public of China to know. This is stuff that you
can already imagine, like um the idea of Taiwanese independence,
or topics involving demonstrations in Hong Kong, or ethnic minorities

(28:24):
like weakers. We can we can also tell you the
extent of punishment here. So those earlier examples Matt, you
and I were talking about seven years in Tibet and
Kundun in the government of China did not hesitate to

(28:44):
turn those experiences into examples for all other Western filmmakers,
I'd say all other non Chinese filmmakers. They made it
clear that not only did they not care for the
production of these films whether or not they got released
in China, but they were going to punish the studios

(29:05):
behind them for making these films in the first place,
so Disney Releases couldn't gun. It's kind of an interesting
story too, because they inherited it from Scorsese Sony Releases
seven years in Tibet. They're both parts of massive these studios,
I mean both parts of massive corporations with interests that
are far, far past movies. A good illustration with this,

(29:27):
this very common in corporate America, would be the comedy
series Thirty Rock, which is awesome. In thirty Rock, Alec
Baldwin plays a stylized version of Lauren Michaels, and Alec
Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy, runs NBC, but he really wants
to run GE, which is like the parent company, and

(29:50):
so there are numerous episodes where his character is calling
in the writers of this show and saying, look, I
understand you guys do a comedy sketch show. Microwaves are
very big right now, Okay, so we need to make
sure that there are a lot of microwaves in these sketches.
This happens this, uh, something like this, full disclosure. We're

(30:11):
an anti censorship show. Full disclosure. Matt. Remember when stuff
like this used to happen to us during the Discovery
days on our little show. I don't remember anything particularly
like this, but I do remember a little thing with
Mermaids once. Oh yeah, Mermaids. We fought the good fight
on that one. I think we did. We got away

(30:32):
with it too for now. But there are things like, um,
I think it's fair as say it's it's been long enough.
There are things where, uh, there would be some larger
initiative and incorporation, like um, punkin chunkin was one. It
was this seasonal this seasonal television event where people would

(30:54):
build tribute Shay tribute says and they would launch pumpkins
to see how are they could chunk chunk the punkin pumpkin.
This is still indoctrinated and so various. I forgot about
Shark Week to Ben and Shark Week. Yeah yeah, trying
to make my old car show about sharks for like

(31:14):
a week every year. That was. It was a good
creative exercise anyway. So so what we're saying is the
Disney that we're talking about the movie studio is a
smaller part of the bigger thing, the actual mouse and
the part of Sony that's releasing seven years in Tibet
is also a smaller part of a larger entity. China

(31:38):
knew this, so they didn't stress going after the kids here.
They didn't really stress too much about going after the studios.
They just cut them off. But then they escalated and
punished the parent companies for a while, they banned Sony
and Disney all together from the entire country of China.
Just no if sands or butts, no loopholes. In fact,

(32:00):
in the case of Disney, Michael Eisner and his team
Michael Eisler was CEO at the time, conspired. This is
a small conspiracy and much larger one. They conspired to
actively make this film couldn't done unsuccessful. They purposely sabotaged
it because they didn't want to be seen as just

(32:21):
rolling over and going belly up for the censors of
a foreign government, because then it would look like they
were anti free speech and they were disrespecting the legacy
of an autour like Martin Scorsese. So instead, this is
what Eisener does. They say, we're going to release this
movie because we said we would, we contractually have to,

(32:43):
but we're only gonna put it in four theaters literally,
one like four theater screens. We're going to give it
a very small runway of airtime, and then we're gonna say, whoops, uh,
this movie did a terrible job, so it doesn't make
sense for us financially to distribute it further. That's that's

(33:06):
what happened. It's an honest mistake that show biz and
that wasn't enough. So get this. He flew Michael Isiser,
one of the most powerful CEOs in this field. He
flies personally to Beijing and apologizes to them, to the
officials involved, and he says, this is a real quote.
You can look it up. He says, the bad news

(33:28):
is the movie was released. The good news is nobody
saw it. Yeah. Yeah, that's I mean, if you really
wrap your head around what that means. The head of
one of these giant corporations flew to China and said, hey,
we're sorry about that. Won't happen again. Please don't punish
our parent company, my company any further. All the other

(33:51):
major corporations, especially large conglomerates that also owned movie studios,
took real notice. They're like, Okay, it's nineteen we can't
do this again. We're not going to do this again.
Uh so we need to be. We need to basically
keep a close watch internally on both the writing of

(34:14):
films and the films that are trying to come out.
And we're gonna have to tamp down a little bit
on some of the content that our creatives are attempting
to put out, those troublesome creatives. Uh. And this is
this leads to a situation which is kind of bizarre,
you know. Uh. One mark of respect that you can

(34:37):
give Hollywood, despite its many many imperfections, it's uh often unclean,
lack of ethics, etcetera, etcetera. One thing you can say
in as a positive about the US film entertainment industry
is that it doesn't it doesn't really hesitate to speak

(34:58):
truth to political power structures in the US. It's up
for grabs, you know. And you'll see filmmakers and screenwriters
and directors and even sometimes some suits who are saying
they feel that it is morally correct to call out
bad behavior and tell the unpleasant truths, which I you know,

(35:20):
obviously I think Matt, you and I both have great
respect for that. But those same folks are increasingly taking
the opposite approach to the government of China because they
will get smacked down for doing so. It has clear
and immediate financial consequences for the short and long term.
In two thousand and twelve, these two up and coming politicians,

(35:44):
one from US, one from China meet up and they
crack a new deal for foreign films. You'll recognize one
as former Vice President Joe Biden, and his counterpart is
a hot shot named j j and Pink, who would
later go on to become the President of China, just
the way Biden went on. Yeah, there we go, just

(36:05):
the way Biden went and became president of the US.
I shouldn't say it that casually. I don't think it
was like a whole of my beer situation. You know,
there's a lot of work to become president. Anyhow. So
this happens before they are the ultimate authorities in their
respective countries, and they negotiate this expansion of a deal
that will allow a quota of thirty four foreign films

(36:29):
into the Chinese market per year. And uh, they also
up the percentage of ticket sales that the studios will get.
They used to get ticket sales, then they started getting
This was a big win. There is a dangerous win,
and I don't think everybody realized it immediately because it

(36:51):
guaranteed a ton of money, but it also guaranteed a dependency,
something like an addiction. Hollywood became increasingly reliant on these profits,
which meant they were increasingly concerned with making sure that
they could get through the gate of censorship. Uh. And
this is where I think we should go back to

(37:13):
um your excellent description of the mp a A. The
m p a A, the rating system here in the
US is primarily concerned with what could be seen as
age appropriate. We've got G for general audience, P for
parental guidance suggested PG. Thirteen for parental guidance suggested, And hey,

(37:34):
maybe your kids should be like at least thirteen or older. Uh.
And then of course you've got our And then we're
talking about this a second Street restricted, which was so exciting,
you know, to sneak into an R rated movie. Yeah,
I did it, whatever, but they like what? Then then
there's the other Um, well was it we checked with
Mission Control? Oh? N C seventeen. I know it is

(37:55):
a rating at least I seem commonly. And then there's
also the unrated version of certain films that you can find,
but it's usually a special release UH and non in
a theater usually. Yeah, so yeah, I mean that makes sense.
But if you look to China and their system that
those distinctions of like, maybe this is little level of

(38:16):
caution you should take before viewing this film, it doesn't
exist at least not in the same way, right, Yeah, exactly,
because you sure there's the idea of protecting innocent eyeballs
from depictions of things like graphic physical violence and so on,
But the primary goal is to protect the perceived legitimacy

(38:39):
of the current government, to protect the status quo of
domestic society and culture. So this means the Chinese government,
through things like SERF, has the ultimate power to decide
what is or is not appropriate, regardless of a potential

(38:59):
view yours age. So it's a very different set of priorities,
and it's a very different execution of those priorities. It
really has been. Just before we take off here, I
want to talk just a tiny bit more about that
added twelve percent of profits that US studios or Hollywood
studios see from sales in China. We we talked on

(39:22):
this show a lot about corporations and capitalism and what
it means to have UH increases in profits on a
year over year basis or a quarter by quarter basis,
and how that, how that translates into the success or
massive failure of a company. If we look to something

(39:42):
like Netflix that very recently in the news, in one
of their quarterly quarterly reports, showed that they had fewer
people using their service, like fewer new subscriptions coming in
on a monthly basis, and their stock price fell by
billions and billions of dollars. Now, the same thing with

(40:02):
all of these privately owned corporations, some of them traded
I believe at least the parent companies are traded in
through the stock market. If you are adding to your
line a potential extra twelve percent in profits that goes
up one year or one quarter or whatever it is,
then you've got to hit that thing again at least

(40:24):
that or you're gonna show your investors are gonna lose
their confidence in you. So it really is, as Ben said,
a leash or some it's it's a very firm control
mechanism that the state of China then has on Hollywood. Absolutely, yeah,
and well said, But how okay, So let's maybe do

(40:45):
a thought experiment and imagine that you and I are
making stuff they don't want you to know. The movie,
hopefully with a more creative title, and we know that
it's fine to to air it in the US or wherever,
but our big Crown Jewel will be airing this in

(41:06):
China for some reason. We look at each other and
we both say, you know what, dude, that's the perfect
audience for this. For this film in particular, we're gonna
have to figure out how to navigate that sensor process.
So we're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor,
gonna put our filmmaker hats on, and then we're gonna
return and see how we would try to tackle this.

(41:34):
We're back, We're back, We're now, um, we're now. What
kind of level of filmmaking should we be at for
this experiment? Matt? Do you want to be like, are
we like um on Ginews kind of James Cameron level?
We're James Cameron okay, cool, so we can make blockbuster
movies as an excuse for us to use a submarine.

(41:56):
We're at that level. Oh oh dude. Yeah, we made
Avatar okay, and now we gotta make Avatar too. But
the problem is there's some stuff in there that China
seems to think we're heavily implying is China, you know
it's a metaphor, right, It's not, it's totally not, but
they think it is. So we gotta be real careful,
right right. And due to my due to my color blindness,

(42:20):
which is a true thing, there's a lot of red
stuff in the cut, and we've got to figure out
what that is. And then we've also got stuff they
don't want you to know the movie coming out. So
luckily we have some help from a guy named Robert Kane.
Robert Kane has been making films at this point for
decades in China, and he has an excellent explanation of

(42:41):
this on his blog. So Matt and I and Paul
as our let's say, let's say Mission Control is like
our studio head money guy, and so we have to
make sure that we don't get on his bad side
to remain profitable. So we're heavily incentivized to make something
work for Avatar and for Staddwick the movie. Uh. The

(43:05):
we we know that the principal aims of their censorship
system in China are, from their own description, to promote
the Confucian understanding of morality, to maintain political stability, and
to make sure that everything is socially harmonious. We want,
if we're the sensors, then to the most extreme degree possible,

(43:29):
we want everyone to appear to be on the same
page about everything. Yeah. Well, but but that's pretty easy, right.
We just send them the final cut, you know, or
at least a rough cut of the film that we're
working on, and then they'll give us notes, right, and
we'll say, okay, we'll try and work well at some
part of the process. That's what we do. But first
we have to send them the script before we film.

(43:51):
We're well, I guess we could be filming depending on
production timeline, but we have to start with the script,
and there will be a three part process. So we
send our screenplay, or we could send our finished film,
but we'll see why that's risky to this censorship board.
The board has uh a little more than two weeks

(44:12):
fifteen days to respond to us, but you know, it's bureaucracy,
so it's not always going to be within that fifteen
day period the right, right, you know, And we don't
know how they felt about the first avatar, so the
authorities will respond with some comments about things, but often

(44:36):
also suggestions revisions. Here's how you alter the film to
meet our checklist of taboo subjects. And then we as
the filmmakers, get the opportunity to go back to our
lab and make those modifications. You know, maybe let's maybe
let's take the statue of liberty out of this shot,

(44:57):
or maybe let's change ange. Uh, this conversation about torture, right,
even one throwaway line someone says, well, they tortured them
like people do in China. Then they would say, okay, yeah,
it's gotta well there is this, we'll definitely cut that.

(45:18):
But there is a scene that it's like in the
climax where there are a bunch of these tanks rolling
down this hillside and then one of the avatars stands
in front of it and it had just been shopping
I think maybe a grocery shopping, and uh, it's just
standing there and it's defying of the tanks and I
really need that to be in ben. Yeah, And so

(45:40):
they'll come back and they'll say, um, come on, guys,
come on. You know, they might be pretty cool with us,
you know, like the cool teacher catching kids smoking in
the parking lot after school. Like, hey, you're better than
this guy's real disappointed. Okay, And then we would we

(46:01):
would come back and say like, okay, well, you know,
Matt and I really need this in. Are there other
machines we can use? What or or like animals? What
if they're like elephants or you know the originals? Yeah?
Well what if? Yeah? What if we take the tanks
out and now it's just a bunch of people and

(46:22):
they're all holding umbrellas? Would that be okay? Right? Right right?
We're just pitching these back and forth and they will
review the changes and they might say, like, guys, seriously,
what what did you expect? Or they might say, Okay,
this works because I know you you know, and I

(46:44):
liked the first avatar. Uh. So if if this whole process, though,
uh goes to pot and goes sideways the first time around,
then we can go back and start it again and
try to try to have a mulligan, one more additional review.
And this can happen because again, the filmmakers and their studioheads,

(47:05):
the PULM mission controls are aware that there are potentially
billions of dollars of profit on the line, and to
be really clear about these sensors. These folks aren't here like,
they're not a writer's room punching up scripts. They're not
adding cool tags, the jokes or zingers or puns or whatever.
They're not always talking about product placement. They're focused on

(47:27):
telling you, as a filmmaker what you can't do. So
we can tell you some of the red flags for sensors.
Maybe we shouldn't say red flags. Uh. They include stuff
like depictions of sex and violence. They don't like a
lot of obscene language, a lot of religious depictions. Uh.
They don't like superstition as well, nor gambling, nor vices

(47:49):
like too much drinking, drug abuse, or uh, criminal activity,
especially if it seems to condone criminal activity. And this
is where Kane has, uh a really interesting observation that
I don't think a lot of us in the US
are aware of. There's something else that China is very
big on. Censory. Yeah, superhero stuff. What they don't They

(48:12):
don't they don't like Dr Strange apparently, or any of
the multiverse stuff because they don't like time travel. What
the heck? Gotta what we gotta have scientific facts behind
all of our plot points. How are we gonna make
Avatar bin the second one obviously, well yeah, they say
it needs to be based in scientific fact. So also

(48:33):
ghost or out, which is a shame because I love
ghost in any story. It doesn't matter what it is. Uh.
And but what if it's like six cents where you
don't realize it's a ghost the whole movie and we
just send in the last like two pages of the script.
It ends up kind of a cliffhanger, that, right, and

(48:54):
then we'll get that same I'm I'm kind of I'm
increasingly warming up to this idea of like a friendly
bureaucratic censor who likes us, but his hands are tied
and he's like, come on, guys, it's not the whole
and it's like, you know, it's like four am over here.
I have a family, I have to go to sleep,

(49:17):
and we're like no, no, no, no, no, go for it,
go for it. So yes, it's true. Also, obviously, anything
that seems to in any way impinge upon the reputation
of the Communist Party or leaders of the Communist Party,
so pretty much any leader from on h that is
prohibited with prejudice. And there's something else that's really funny.

(49:40):
It's stuck out to me and I think a lot
of our fellow fans of old martial arts films will
clock this. You might be saying, hey, on, I watch
a ton of old Chinese action films and they break
these rules all the time. It's true because there's wiggle
room for film that were either filmed in the past

(50:03):
or films that are depicting stuff before the revolution, before
nineteen forty nine. So the uh if you see a
film set in like, um, some ancient dynastic past and
there's a lot of fighting, that's view differently from something
set in the present day with a lot of violence,

(50:25):
or you know, any of those other taboo subjects we named,
which is is pretty startling, you know, And that's why, uh,
that's why you see a lot of blockbuster films in
China that are set in the ancient past, because you know,
or maybe somebody tried to get really close to it

(50:49):
and they were like, this entire incredibly violent story, anti
government story takes place in one day December twenty nine.
It's about ghosts. So I don't know, someone may have
tried that, but but like we know, so we know

(51:10):
that Western filmmakers started through uh, through experience, learning the
different pain points or the different controversial subjects, and they
got help every so often by sensors who would provide
guidelines that explain their judgment. In two thousand eight, they

(51:31):
codified a list of no nos. We paraphrase these above.
You can see the full list on Robert Kaine's blog.
He calls it kind of a set of commandments. But
it doesn't stop there. So let's say we have gotten
stuff then what you know in the movie and Avatar
to through the sensors. Somehow we made all like we

(51:51):
turned the tanks into elephants. We replaced troubling color palettes
and all that junk. And now we're filming and because
we are James Cameron level, we are going to film
in the real location, minimal green screens for us. We're
going to China. That's where we're filming both of these movies,

(52:11):
and that's where we learned that they're going to be
spies on set. I just had a flash of I
don't know if you remember this movie, The Great Wall,
that Matt Damon made years ago. I can't remember when
it was in the twenty teens what it's called The
Great Wall, And I remember being flabbergasted by it, but

(52:33):
I do imagine that they shot much of it on
the actual Great Wall. Sorry, that's all I'm thinking about.
I always thinking about that too. Uh. Yeah, let's let's
go back. Sorry but oh no, no, no, you know
what while we're here, what we should also say? We
haven't mentioned this yet? And this is something I know
everybody is seen if you're a film buff. Uh. It's

(52:55):
not always a matter of cutting out content or revised
seeing existing content. You'll see films Marvel has done this too,
uh and Fox have done this. You'll see films where
additional content is added for the Chinese audience to put
more stuff related to China and Chinese culture in the film, Like, uh,

(53:19):
so the Great Wall is a whole different movie. And
then they just added the Great Wall and called it
but they just added Matt Damon uh the original cut.
He's not a uh no, no no, and Matt Damon
is a great actor to be fair. Uh. In X
Men Days of Future Past, for example, the studio added
over thirty minutes of footage, including cameos from like a

(53:44):
very high level Chinese star being bing Han and then
a Chinese boy band. They added it in because they
they know there's a big audience, and if people are
super fans of that actor or that boy band, then
they'll go just to see that part. So there there's
a clear calculus here. I don't have proof of this, um,

(54:06):
but I have a theory. You know. I loved, I love,
love loved the film series Pacific Rim, which is just
giant robots and kaiju fighting. Don't stress about the plot,
don't stress about the holes in the plot. Uh, it's
a popcorn film. I was there to have a good time.
The special effects are amazing, and in the sequel it's

(54:28):
nuts because US studios right, didn't really care too much
for Pacific Rim, but it made a killing in China
and that meant Yeah. Even though even though for a
long time studios I would say, to the detriment of
the art, studios were incredibly myopically focused on reboots, right, reboots, sequels. Uh,

(54:54):
let's let's take something that was doing well in the
nineties and let's just make it again, you know, because
it's safe. So they were a little bit adverse to
new ideas, got it, oh dude, totally at first new ideas.
But I want to stay on Pacific Rim because I
happen to just read about this one. Ben. I know
you're a big fan. I still haven't seen any of

(55:15):
the Pacific Room movies, by the way, and I need to.
I know I need to, but oh I'm going to.
But it's the leash we were talking about, or the
the necessity to have the China market, because that movie
cost a hundred The first one cost a hundred ninety
million dollars to make, and then it made back around

(55:35):
a hundred million dollars in the United States market and
and other markets. But then you add the China's market
to it, it actually makes money and now it's profitable.
But if they didn't have that, and if they didn't
do what they needed to do to get it played
in China, they would have lost nine million dollars. Yeah,

(55:55):
you can't do that. Yeah, exactly. They made more money
from that film in China than they did in the
entirety of North America, so Mexico, Canada, and the US.
They made like over a hundred and ten million dollars
in China alone. Uh, and then that was enough even
for these guys who are super selfishured and confidently saying

(56:16):
your reboots are where it's at that made enough that
they had to pay attention and they said, Okay, well, yeah,
it's time for a sequel. And because of the nature
of the success of the first one in China, Pacific
Rim to Pacific Rim Uprising leaned into it hard. That's

(56:36):
why there's a there's a review that I quite enjoyed
A Pacific Rim Uprising in Vulture when the film came
out by Emily Yoshida, and the title simply says specific
Rim Uprising might be the most China bait studio release yet.
Uh it's and if you look at it, if you

(56:58):
look at what's interest in his you know there are
entire plot lines that occur in Mandarin. Charlie Day from
Always Stunnying Philadelphia is in this film. Again, he was
in the first one too, and he is trying Mandarin.
There's a old running joke about him trying to speak
Mandarin well. And then Chinese stars, domestic Chinese stars get

(57:20):
pretty meaty uh rules in this. And then when I
was watching his funny because you'll see like a Chinese
military official who's in a lot of pivotal scenes. Uh,
and he doesn't have a ton of lines, but there
will be protagonist principles in the story who are talking
and he's just kind of in the room and they

(57:42):
can't ra just looked at him going like oh yeah,
uh huh no, no, okay, that kind of stuff. Yeah, exactly,
it was facial expressions, and the idea was the idea
I think was that he was the He was the
spy on set and they put him there. They were like, actually,
this dude's really cool. Did you know he can juggle?

(58:05):
Can we have him? He's not going to juggle on air,
but I think we can get him on the camera anyway.
So yeah, So there are spies on sets. It's not
uncommon if you're filming something in China, and uh Kane himself,
Robert Kane has a story about this which is pretty
human and understandable. His production made an honest mistake. They

(58:28):
weren't trying to sneak in subversive stuff, but it got
back to a government official, and the government official, the
party official, was about to shut down the production until
he went to him and essentially said, look, we didn't
mean to do anything. We have no problem with changing it.
That's like, totally are bad. Please just understand that maybe
we were a little thick about this. We didn't we

(58:50):
didn't know what the deal was. Now we know, and
hopefully we're cool. And the government official, also being a
human being, said yeah, no, no, okay, I believe Okay, guys,
all right, you rascals. Uh. But he this led him
to make a really interesting point. He says, Yeah, the

(59:10):
systems draconian. To a lot of people outside of China
and within China, it feels like stamping down on free speech.
But we have to remember the actual people, those thirtysomething
so censors who are making these decisions. In a lot
of cases, they're just good old film nerds too. They
they want to they want to see movies. They want

(59:32):
to help get this stuff over the line. In some cases,
and I haven't talked to these people personally, but in
some cases, I think it's reasonable to assume they may
be kind of bummed about their jobs. They might be like,
man that I can see that ghost on screen from
the script and it's just we can't do it, guys,
I'm so tired of sarfling all the time, exactly. Still,

(59:58):
that's that the way it stands, Censorship is the law
of the land, it's the rule of the day, and
it may be, honestly something dangerous in the near future.
You're gonna you're seeing already increasingly odd things in modern
Hollywood films. I want to go to Stanley rosen uh
University of Southern California political science professor. He studies China's

(01:00:21):
film industry extensively, and he said it's escalating in the
sense that sensors are much more direct and banning films
outright instead of tampering or asking for scenes to be removed.
But that's not the dangerous thing. The dangerous thing is
that these sensors are also apparently asking for oversight on

(01:00:42):
versions of movies for audiences outside of China. So let's say,
let's say Avatar Too is only going to be released
in France, and stuff they want you Know is only
coming out in Malta. Why not? There's this idea that
just for the film to exist, not just in China

(01:01:06):
but in the world, the entirety of the international release
has to meet these censorship requirements. And what does this
mean for you? It means even if you are not
in China, if you have never visited, you have no
plans to visit, you don't know a lick a Mandarin.
You might be watching not the film in the studio
wanted to make, but the film China allowed it to make.

(01:01:27):
Keep a close eye a Marvel and Disney in this
regard there. You may have seen this in the news
or at least on social media. Think about the Statue
of Liberty and oh, I don't know, a Spider Man
movie you might have seen lately. Anything that is going
to show a major nationalistic monument, something that is going

(01:01:48):
to represent a different country or great pride in a
different country that is not China might be looked down
upon by these sensors because, hey, look, if I'm if
I'm in China, I'm texting the way my citizens feel
about our country and pride in our system. I don't
want people getting all happy and excited about democracy and

(01:02:10):
the United States. That's not good for us. Uh. It's
weird to think that now that you've got this control
mechanism within with your profits, you can actually get Americans
who are making films for America to have to change
their plot points inside America because of your desires. Yeah. Possibly,

(01:02:32):
that's I mean, that's the that's the aim. The new
Doctor Strange got in trouble for what was seen as
a nod to Following Gong. If you want to know
why that's a big deal, check out our earlier episode
on Following Gong, which will explain that beautiful Shenyan reference
uh and to to other. To some people, this is

(01:02:54):
a cautionary tale of the danger of Orwellian big brothers.
But to others, it'sigger than that. It's much bigger. It's
an information war. It's a trade dispute. When you think
about it, you know, we can talk back and forth
all the livelong midnight about the importance of unstifled artistry
and free speech. But these companies making these films, they

(01:03:14):
are for profit entities. And so while an average movie
goer can say, hey, what's what's the big hubbub about
having two girls kissing on screen? Briefly, those companies and
those studios are saying in conference rooms, they're saying, Okay,
what can we do at all possible to get a
piece of this multibillion dollar gold mine. That's why Hollywood

(01:03:37):
companies are pre censoring films to avoid losing access to
that Chinese market. And it's possible that China, through sheer
economic heft, may one day be silently directing films and
markets across the world, including maybe Avatar too, definitely Avatar.

(01:03:58):
Uh well, um, this makes me sad. I don't know
what to do because it does feel like the film
industry in the US is just it's it's changed to
the profits that are needed. So it's just gonna happen
until something major changes. I mean, it's not a big
deal necessarily, at least for most people. And it just

(01:04:21):
means that stories are going to be shaped and changed
in ways that you know, some a tour, some really
incredible writer, you know, they wanted to show you and
tell you a story, but they won't be able to
do it in the same way anymore. That's kind of
messed up. Well. Also, you know, uh, I do want
to shout out the great many filmmakers who are Chinese

(01:04:45):
nationals who live in China now, who work in China,
and they're making amazing stuff. It just you know, it
causes you to wonder what they would make if they
could make whatever they wanted, and right now it's question
that is difficult to answer. So with that, we want
to hear what you think. Is this just the way

(01:05:08):
the cinematic sausage gets made. Should should film be steered
by ideology and profit motivations? Uh? And where in the
hierarchy of priorities should free speech occur? Do you agree
with China's approach to this? Uh? Do you disagree? If so,
why and if you have any experiences with this, please

(01:05:30):
let us know, please, please please. We can't wait to
hear some some firsthand anecdotes. Yeah, I want to hear anecdotes.
I want to hear what are we missing? What are
we not thinking about in the bigger discussion here, because
I know there's probably a few things that we're just
we haven't thought about yet, So let us know those things.
You can find us all over the place on social
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(01:05:55):
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(01:06:17):
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(01:06:41):
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(01:07:25):
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(01:07:46):
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