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Chinese Censorship: A Small Price to Pay for Filthy Lucre!

Daniel Craig in 'Skyfall,' a movie censored by the Chinese
May 28, 2015

There's an interesting report at NPR on the ways in which China's censorship regime exerts influence on American filmmaking. As someone who has long grated at the way domestic filmmakers scream "censorship!" when they get a rating from the MPAA they don't like but say virtually nothing about actual censorship in overseas markets, what was intriguing to me was the sort of thing that earned the wrath of China:

Consider Mission: Impossible III, which was partially shot in Shanghai. The film's establishing shot of Shanghai shows Tom Cruise walking past the winking lights of the modern cityscape and then past underwear hanging from a clothesline. The movie was released in 2006. Even now, many people in Shanghai don't own dryers and hang their clothes out on the balcony to dry.

"The censors felt that it did not portray Shanghai in a positive light, so that scene was removed from the movie," says T.J. Green, CEO of Apex Entertainment, which owns and builds movie theaters in China.

"The censorship always goes back to the Communist Party. They're in charge and they're always looking at how China is portrayed," he says. "They didn't want to see something that portrayed it ... [as] a developing country."

Nor do they like to see Chinese portrayed as incapable of defending themselves. In the latest 007 movie, Skyfall, an assassin walks into a skyscraper in Shanghai's showcase financial district and shoots a security guard. Censors ordered that scene cut, too.

"My speculation would be they didn't like the fact that a foreign perpetrator comes in and a Chinese security guard just gets shot and looks weak," says Green, who adds that the scene amounts to a loss of face. From the censors' perspective, the movie is saying: "They can't secure their most prized assets in China."

China is, in essence, using its status as a 21st century economic power to project an image as members of an ancient honor-bound society might. True, China is worried about pernicious political ideas: censors ordered a scene in which government agents erase the memory of average citizens cut from Men in Black III because they thought it would call to mind China's own efforts to suppress dissent. However, they seem equally concerned about losing face, about looking weak. They don't want the rest of the world to think that they are easy prey—and they don't want their own people thinking they are incompetent, easily defeated pikers.

There's a whole book to be written about Chinese film censorship as a form of national brand maintenance—and the United States film industry's complicity in allowing such messaging to occur. There's nothing quite as humorous as brave artists propping up a horrifyingly corrupt regime dedicated to crushing civil liberties in order to pocket a few (hundred million) extra dollars.

Published under: China