

Censorship Lift for “V for Vendetta” Shocks China - mtgx
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/12/18/censorship-lift-for-v-for-vendetta-shocks-china/

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sageikosa
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...

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pretoriusB
> _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...

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potatolicious
> _"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.

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

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hmexx
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...

~~~
INTPenis
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...

~~~
sbirchall
“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.

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stfu
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.

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redthrowaway
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.

~~~
gtr32x
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.

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felipe
> 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.

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

~~~
felipe
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>

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joshmaker
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.

~~~
ttflee
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.

~~~
betterunix
"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).

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MereInterest
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.

~~~
cli
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.

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clippit
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.

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ttflee
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.

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sparx
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.

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propercoil
Any insight from a native?

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alexfarran
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.

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

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fywacro
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?

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vorg
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.

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FarhadG
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"

