“It’s all a version of self-regulation we’ve been going through for decades,” says Russell Schwartz, a former president of marketing at New Line Cinema and at Relativity Media, who oversaw campaigns for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Rush Hour sequels. Thus, when China re-allowed Hollywood movies in the late 1980s and ’90s (they were banned during the Cultural Revolution) as long as it could select and edit the ones it wanted, American companies didn’t see red flags. in 1982 after child psychologists accused the film of portraying adults as “ enemies of children.” Three Nordic countries placed an age restriction on the film E.T. Last Tango in Paris, with its notoriously explicit sex scenes, was edited before it could be released in Britain and barred from being shown in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Post–World War II West German audiences saw a different version of Casablanca than the rest of the world. The phenomenon has long been part of the global film industry. W hat critics might call censorship, Hollywood studios might label a market-entry strategy. Gilles Sabrié / The New York Times / Redux China has simply become too lucrative for Hollywood to resist. Today, film censorship-the rise of which you can literally watch on screen-has become one of the most visible examples of American businesses bending their values to satisfy China, and a worrying harbinger for any industry that wants access to the country’s consumers. During the blacklist era of the 1940s and ’50s, Hollywood studios infamously submitted to domestic political pressure. With studios now implementing their own limits on free speech, America’s supposedly gutsy, creative entertainment industry is at rapid risk of making preemptive self-censorship the standard. (Universal, Disney, and the other major Hollywood studios I reached out to for this story all declined to comment or did not respond to my requests.) Instead, the film industry has regularly shaped its productions to please Beijing whenever Hollywood fails, it either issues self-flagellatory public apologies or remains silent on the matter altogether. Though some American filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino and Judd Apatow, have pushed back on China’s demands, they are the rare exceptions willing and able to weather any potential repercussions. Meanwhile, China’s film industry now churns out its own big-budget franchises, lessening the country’s dependence on the next Fast & Furious installment. The country, which already places a quota on the number of foreign films that can be screened every year, banned them for nearly two months this summer because of celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding. This also means China will assert itself more aggressively to control Hollywood. In 2020, the Chinese film market officially surpassed North America’s as the world’s biggest box office, all but ensuring that Hollywood studios will continue to do everything possible for access to the country. Now, more than ever before, that boss is Beijing. No matter their clout in Hollywood, filmmakers and actors have always been subject to bosses who decide which movies get to soar at the box office and which are left to languish. Hers is a cautionary tale-and a common one these days. (Zhao declined to comment on the matter.) Swiftly and quietly, Zhao’s native country appears to have disowned her-at least, for now. Eternals, which should have been a shoo-in to screen across China, now faces a potential ban. Beijing responded by deleting social-media celebrations of her Oscar win and canceling the release of Nomadland. In March, the Communist Party–owned newspaper Global Times anointed her “the pride of China.”īut then an eight-year-old interview in which Zhao called the country a place “where there are lies everywhere” spread online. And Zhao’s success in Hollywood made her the model of a crossover artist, bringing Chinese sensibilities to American filmmaking. Born in Beijing, she also has ties to Chinese entertainment royalty: Her stepmother, Song Dandan, is one of the most celebrated comic actresses in the country. Zhao was, for a time, just as warmly regarded in China. She commands so much admiration from the industry right now that she gets away with showing up to the red carpet of a film premiere in jeans. In November, her big-budget Marvel movie, Eternals, will arrive in theaters. In April, she made history as the first woman of color to win Best Director at the Oscars. C hloé Zhao, the director of Nomadland, is new Hollywood royalty.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |