Forgive me ignorance about the Iron Man movies, but...why is this "unfortunate"?
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How do you feel about films like Dreamworks' Abominable? (AKA Chinese influence in cinema)
- Thread starter Boogiepop
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Forgive me ignorance about the Iron Man movies, but...why is this "unfortunate"?
The Farewell is a fully US production, China doesn't do indies.
It has Chinese language production company logos up front. I'm assuming they're Chinese production companies.
edit:
Ray Productions is Chinese.
And they filmed in China, right? That's not surprising.
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In this thread people have already mixed up the Chinese people, Chinese government and films made by Chinese-Americans.
Era really can't tell them apart.
Era really can't tell them apart.
If you are gonna come up with ludicrous sweeping generalizations, it's on you to provide the proof in order to convince people.
Nothing wrong with a film featuring the cultural aspects and landscapes of the country. So long as they don't weave some nationalistic drivel into the story, it's fine.
I just dared compare enabling genocide to genocide. I'm not gonna play 30 shades of moral bankruptcy in order to justify one side's entitlement to moral superiority. If we are gonna test Chinese kid movies for purity I don't see how American ones are allowed to escape the system. It's fucking 2019 and Donald Trump is in the White House. The world is a mess. Don't you dare tell me the US here of all countries has their hands clean.
This board has gone full on crazy.
Theres levels to this shit. Say what you want about chinese jingoistic practices. And hollywood pandering. But you dont compare a border prison camp to full blown fucking religous genocide dude. You just dont.
I dont care how much chinese pride you have. Its flat out uncomparable.
I remember reading that she shopped it to Chinese financiers and they didn't get it, guess they had to sign on with them to film there regardless.
Ehhh, I mean...some of them are pretty TEAM AMERICA FUCK YEAH.
It's hard to remove political content from anything because politics is life.
I thought that by going on pure story telling alone, it failed tbh. I like and support the film for what it represents, but I didn't find it to be a GOOD film when looking at the storytelling, cinematics, etc.
...how do you know what is appealing to Chinese people? lol. There's a billion Chinese people.
Nooooo you don't understand. Anything that even might hint that there's nonwhite, none English speaking people that are equally important is PANDERING.
By that measure, anyone who watches a film that makes them want to go to America is because of the American influence in the film? Is that supposed to be a difficult concept to grasp? Exposure to interesting, novel, and/or pretty places does make quite a few people desire to experience it for themselves.
You should. That's why I find most war movies to be tedious, honestly. They basically superglue your nose to America's collective military ass and glorify war.
quelle surprise
IT WAS WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY AN AMERICAN, STARRING ANOTHER AMERICAN. PREMIERED IN AMERICA AND DISTRIBUTED BY AN AMERICAN COMPANY, FOUNDED BY ANOTHER AMERICAN.
MAYBE IF AWKWAFINA PLAYED A COP AND SHOT AN UNARMED TEENAGED BLACK MALE, WOULD THAT HELP?
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Dang I dont think I can watch this movie lol. The trailer almost had me bawling.
While there are legitimate criticisms of the Chinese government, there are indeed many on ERA that think this gives them to right to post racist generalizations of Chinese people. It's not as bad as I've seen elsewhere, but it is still disgusting to see these dog whistles here as well.
When the movie starts talking about why the yetis should only have one child, you can complain.
The movie seems to stop every 10 minutes to tell you how awesome china is. It is the equivalent of a Adam Sandler film If you replace the random brands with China.
It may not be dangerous but it just feels dirty To me.
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Huh? I was only responding to the post that said it wasn't co-produced.
I've never been to China, but it does seem like a pretty lovely country and I'm sure it has some great people there too.
The PRC, the government that controls the country and it's people, I don't fuck with. But I also don't fuck with the United States government either. Doesn't mean there aren't great places here or great people.
I haven't seen the movie, so I can't speak on it, but again there's a difference between a film saying "China is a beautiful place" and "This is why we censor everything".
Again, I'm comparing full blown enabling genocide to genocide. You apparently wanna keep omitting the "enabling genocide" part to talk about the border camps again, and I find that shit offensive and ridiculously blatant. I am talking of the US enabling genocide. Wanna talk camps, we'll talk camps, but I don't know why you keep bringing that up when I'm literally comparing enabling genocide to genocide. I got way less than zero chinese pride. The shit they are doing to the Uighurs and the people of Hong Kong should offend anyone.
I don't like it from a creative standpoint when there are region-specific scenes. Stand behind what you film and put it out there for all of us.
Don't know how I would feel about movies approaching propaganda, but I can't say that I've seen any American ones that have gone to that extent.
Don't know how I would feel about movies approaching propaganda, but I can't say that I've seen any American ones that have gone to that extent.
Just as not everything American is inherently toxic because of a shitheel government, not everything Chinese is toxic because of a shitheel government. There are a lot of toxic elements in the economic and governmental systems of both countries, especially in trying to influence other nations' companies and people in criticism of their governments. But it's not simply just those elements.
So, really, I don't see Abominable as any more or less problematic than any other Dreamworks production. I don't see Chinese cultural influence on cinema as inherently bad. What's bad with it is when that influence causes artistic censorship, like, say, prevents someone from making a character openly LGBTQ+ in a major motion picture when they would otherwise, just to be able to come out in China. But that's less to do with Chinese culture as a thousands of years old culture, and more to do with capitalistic desires of movie producers that puts money before both art and people's rights, and the bigotry of the Chinese authoritarian government that puts unjust "peace" before justice.
I hope I'm making sense here.... like, to put it another way, I don't see an issue with making movies with a Chinese audience in mind. That's fine. I do take issue with trying to make your artists stifle their own freedom just to appease government censors, not any actual people.
So, really, I don't see Abominable as any more or less problematic than any other Dreamworks production. I don't see Chinese cultural influence on cinema as inherently bad. What's bad with it is when that influence causes artistic censorship, like, say, prevents someone from making a character openly LGBTQ+ in a major motion picture when they would otherwise, just to be able to come out in China. But that's less to do with Chinese culture as a thousands of years old culture, and more to do with capitalistic desires of movie producers that puts money before both art and people's rights, and the bigotry of the Chinese authoritarian government that puts unjust "peace" before justice.
I hope I'm making sense here.... like, to put it another way, I don't see an issue with making movies with a Chinese audience in mind. That's fine. I do take issue with trying to make your artists stifle their own freedom just to appease government censors, not any actual people.
Not sure where the China influence in Abominable is, I mean China is pretty fucking huge and diverse. HOWEVER, if Abominable had a scene praising the Communist government, then that'd be pandering.
Also pretty amusing how people conflate Chinese citizens as the same thing as Chinese-Americans, two completely different things. I did like the Farewell though, an Americanized Chinese person going back to China and telling an entire country that their culture is wrong and all of China saying "get your Americanized ass back to America you traitor".
Also pretty amusing how people conflate Chinese citizens as the same thing as Chinese-Americans, two completely different things. I did like the Farewell though, an Americanized Chinese person going back to China and telling an entire country that their culture is wrong and all of China saying "get your Americanized ass back to America you traitor".
I'm not really sure what the criteria is for an indie but I can't imagine The Farewell was a lower financed production than most stuff by like Jia Zhangke or Lou Ye. Bi Gan's had a lot of success after Kaili Blues as well. I guess my question is what do you mean China doesn't do indies? There's probably a good aspect of the Chinese film making world I don't know about.
Yeah this.
It's been like this for a long time and even back on the old forum.
Oh Hi,
I'm sure you are very proud of yourself for insinuating I"m some sort of bigot or xenophobe instead of trying to give me a reason to change my mind. In Case you forgot I actually went and paid to see the movie so the fact that it was made by china, had Chinese characters took place in china did not bother me at all. A film being secretly used to advertise as the primary motive feels dirty to me and it does feel especially dirty when there is a hint of government involvement such as the Bayformers or abominable.
I've never been to China and it does seem like a lovely place with a rich and old culture that I may one day visit but I paid to watch a film, not an advertisement for Chinese tourism.
I view it as two kinds of soft power. First, there is the "our country is pretty cool, come check it out" thats in Indominable, the Mt. Everest chinese climbing movie out now, most American rom-coms, NYC-based movies, etc. I'd even put Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as doing that to 60s Hollywood. I think thats perfectly fine, its a bit weird for us to process the chinese version since we're used to Hollywood America, French cinema, etc but China joining the soft power movie gang isn't a big step.
The weirder one is when it subtly tries to portray China as only good and everyone else as weak. A Wandering Earth is a great example of that, a sci fi movie set ~200 years in the future where China is shown as the leader of the world, and there are scenes in that movie where Indians are viewed as cowards (a Pakistani or Indian crew of a rescue truck decide to abandon their mission to save themselves), some other casual racism towards other countries, the films main idea that collective action tops individual freedom in times of crisis (which may be true), and in general its a movie that really demonstrates the difference between Chinese (both cultural and government) and Western values.
There are some good "lets work together for our planet" moments in that movie so I don't want it to sound like its a total "China #1!!" propaganda movie, I actually really enjoyed that movie in theaters in IMAX (its currently on Netflix) and it was based on a story by Liu Cixin, who is also behind Three Body Problem being developed by amazon. The US does this kind of movie constantly as well between most comic book movies, Transformers, Fast and Furious, etc a soft flex of "being an American is THE BEST!"
I think we'll see more and more of it in the years to come, and its definitely gonna be interesting. For 50 years we've seen Hollywood basically be an arm of American propaganda, now China is stepping into that role too.
The weirder one is when it subtly tries to portray China as only good and everyone else as weak. A Wandering Earth is a great example of that, a sci fi movie set ~200 years in the future where China is shown as the leader of the world, and there are scenes in that movie where Indians are viewed as cowards (a Pakistani or Indian crew of a rescue truck decide to abandon their mission to save themselves), some other casual racism towards other countries, the films main idea that collective action tops individual freedom in times of crisis (which may be true), and in general its a movie that really demonstrates the difference between Chinese (both cultural and government) and Western values.
There are some good "lets work together for our planet" moments in that movie so I don't want it to sound like its a total "China #1!!" propaganda movie, I actually really enjoyed that movie in theaters in IMAX (its currently on Netflix) and it was based on a story by Liu Cixin, who is also behind Three Body Problem being developed by amazon. The US does this kind of movie constantly as well between most comic book movies, Transformers, Fast and Furious, etc a soft flex of "being an American is THE BEST!"
I think we'll see more and more of it in the years to come, and its definitely gonna be interesting. For 50 years we've seen Hollywood basically be an arm of American propaganda, now China is stepping into that role too.
American still allows the creation of downright subversive or degenerate films, music and other art. There are taboos in america (isreal and veterans), but otherwise, you can sing about how you want to shoot every cop in Missouri and no one will bat an eye.
It's real simple: in today's china, would a group of musicians like say, NWA, be tolerated? Or would they just disappear and all trace of their existence scrubbed from the internet.
China didn't have a superior space program, just a lucky opportunity. The book actually portrays the chinese scientists as "kind" cynics, who take advantage of such good "PR" that the central committee "would sell their mother" for such a chance.
Loooooool.
This is some wild shit. Bless your heart.
It's not weird at all though.
I mean, if you acknowledge that it happens in Hollywood with America, how is it weird that it happens when it's Chinese based media?
I am all for criticizing problematic elements in movies (like racism, sexism, etc)...but to think it's suddenly strange when it's been happening for almost a century? You listed some movies where you've seen it for us, so it's really not weird that it happens for others. We can debate if it's good or not (well no because I have to think about it TBH).
You paid money for a commercial product, and don't understand why it's commercialized?
If a kids' movie made by China doesn't talk about the organ harvesting of Uyghurs then it's chinese propaganda.
There is a ridiculous amount of media glamourising America, or at the very least designed to appeal to Americans first and foremost. I have no problen with China getting in on some of that action.
It's been like this for a while now and the powers that be just turn a blind eye to the stuff like it's no big deal.
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