Is Hollywood Bowing to Chinese Censors?
|
Jet Li in" Cradle 2 the Grave," which was banned in China |
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker starred in "Rush Hour 3" |
Monday, Aug. 20, 2007
On screen, actors Jackie Chan and Jet Li can take on any menace - from corrupt cops to hordes of kung fu fighters.
 |
But in real life the two martial artists are licking boots, not kicking booty, to appease Chinese censors.
On Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, the Associated Press reported that Li admitted the script of at least one of his movies was re-written in a failed attempt to get the film onto big screens in mainland China.
For his 2003 movie "Cradle 2 the Grave" Li's character went from being a Chinese police officer who steals nuclear material to a Taiwanese police officer who steals nuclear material, according to the AP article written by the wire service's entertainment reporter, Min Lee.
Americans, unaware of the influence of Chinese censorship, spent $34 million to see the altered final product. Still, Chinese censors banned it.
Chan's latest movie "Rush Hour 3" was also banned in China - likely because the plot involves Chinese gangsters.
Still stinging from the censorship, Chan and Li are currently working on their first movie together, "Forbidden Kingdom." It is the story of an American boy who finds a magic stick and is transported back in time to pre-Communist China. His mission is to save a monkey king. The studio's mission: to get the film past Chinese censors.
"(This) script respects the Chinese character and culture and brings it to a foreign audience," Chan told the Hollywood Reporter, a movie industry trade journal.
The film is being produced by Casey Silver Productions, based in Los Angeles, and the Huayi brothers company in Beijing, China. Teaming up with a Chinese company to produce a film is the latest technique Hollywood studios are trying in an attempt to show films in a country with 1.3 billion people.
Chinese censors allow only 20 foreign films a year to be shown in movie theaters. And even when they make the cut, parts of the films still get cut, for sex, language, politics and a myriad of other reasons. Chinese censors cut a nude scene from the film "Babel" (see story) and hacked away most of actor Chow Yun-Fat's appearances in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" because Yun-Fat's character, Captain Sao Feng, was deemed a racist stereotype.
Teaming up with a Chinese film company allows Hollywood studios to get around the cap of 20 foreign films. Another perk for filming in China is the cheap labor. But there's a catch: Chinese censors get to review the script.
|
"Secret of the Magic Gourd" |
That didn't keep Disney executives from making a movie in China. "The Secret of the Magic Gourd" was Disney's first non-Hollywood movie. No U.S. animators were involved in making the film, according to a July 9, 2007, article by AP's Lee. Disney also has a theme park in Hong Kong.
Script approval was also the Chinese caveat with the American-made film "The Rape of Nanking." Production crew members said the Chinese censors made no cuts in the film. The movie depicts Japan's 1937 attack of Nanking, which was China's capital at the onset of World War II. The movie was filmed in Nanking. The Chinese government says Japanese soldiers massacred 300,000 people; a group of 100 Japanese Parliament members recently claimed the number was 20,000.
The Chinese censors liked the American version of the film so much they approved it 48 hours after it was submitted to China's censorship board, called the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, said Ted Leonsis, the film's producer. Many film reviews in China take months.
"I do think politically, the Chinese say 'OK, someone else is saying that this incident happened. It's not our word against the Japanese word,'" the AP quoted Leonsis as saying in a July 4, 2007 article.
Leonsis is also the vice chairman of AOL, which is owned by Time Warner. Time Warner has invested heavily in China. In 2005, it built 20 movie multiplexes across China, according to an Aug. 29, 2005 article in the New York Times. Time Warner also has a minority stake in CETV, a 24-hour entertainment channel, Geraldine Fabrikant wrote in the New York Times article.
Yahoo and Google have also allegedly cooperated with Chinese censorship. Yahoo turned over emails of Chinese journalist Shi Tao to Communist officials and the emails were used to prosecute him after he anonymously wrote a web article about China's media crackdown. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2006, Yahoo's lawyer and senior vice president, Michael Callahan, said Yahoo officials didn't know the nature of the investigation against Shi Tao, according to an Aug. 8, 2007 Financial Times of London article. However, a U.S.-based human rights group called Dui Hua Foundation produced documents that were given to Yahoo officials in China, which say Shi Tao was being investigated for "illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities." The law is often used against political dissidents in China.
