Friday, March 29th 2024

Hollywood in China


  • By: Web Master
  • | Date: 22 February 2022
  • | Viewer: 1.6k

Akiko Kashiwagi

Hollywood has a big market in China, so much so that Hollywood has been treading carefully and ensuring that Chinese sentiments are not hurt. Hollywood’s sensitive attitude towards China came about in 2008 with the remake “Red Dawn”.

Red Dawn is a 1984 American movie which depicts US being invaded by Soviet Union and its Nicaraguan and Cuban allies with American high school students resisting with guerrilla warfare. In 2007, the housing market in US crashed causing the great recession of 2008. American economy was at a all-time low, hitting every business in every sector. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. was going bankrupt and needed something to stay afloat. The MGM Studios decided to remake “Red Dawn”. But Russia could no longer be cast as the villain. It was decided that the new villain would be China.

As bad as the American economy was in 2008, the Chinese economy was just getting better and better. China had hosted the Summer Olympics for which the famous ‘Bird’s Nest’ Beijing National Stadium was constructed. Chinese manufacturers had started building factories in America, which was unthinkable. In such an environment, casting China as a villain in an American movie was political suicide. However, neither the executives of MGM nor the team working on the remake ever questioned the casting of China as a villain.

When pictures from the movie set started circulating on social media, Chinese state-run newspapers started trashing it. But the full repercussions of casting China as a villain was realized after “Avatar” grossed over $300 million in 2009 in China. Hollywood woke up to the huge potential of China’s box office. MGM had taken loans and in order to raise money, it was selling off its new productions, including the remake of ‘Red Dawn’. But no Hollywood executive wanted to touch a movie which had cast its newest market as a villain. Ultimately, MGM was forced to edit the entire movie with North Korea as the villain. The editing job was a nightmare as the reason for North Korea’s invasion of America had to be established, all Chinese images and symbols had to be changed and Chinese references and dialogues had to be changed to Korean. The remake of” Red Dawn” was finally released in 2012 but it didn’t do too well.

Subsequently, Hollywood has been doing its best to please the Chinese market. Hollywood is self-censoring by avoiding themes which portray China in a bad light. Tim Doescher, from The Heritage Foundation stated that: “Hollywood is relying more and more on the Chinese markets to make profit on movies. That means our films are being written with China in mind.”[1]

The relationship of Hollywood with China has been riddled with controversy. Disney decided to remake its animated movie “Mulan” into a live-action movie. Protests calling for the movie’s boycott started when Liu Yifei, who was cast as the voice of the titular character ‘Mulan’, voiced her support for the Hong Kong Police during the pro-democracy protests. The Hong Kong Police was accused of using excessive force against the protesters. The boycott was called by the ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ – Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand. Agnes Chow was dubbed as the real ‘Mulan’ after she was arrested for her activism and participation in the pro-democracy protests in August, 2019. She was released in June, 2021 after serving 6 months out of her 10 months sentence.

The controversy didn’t end there. The movie thanks a few political entities in its credits, including the Turpan Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang. The US government had flagged this entity for being involved in the human rights abuses of Uyghur Muslims. China has been accused of unleashing a ‘genocide’ against the Uyghur Muslims, which are an ethnic community from Turkey and in minority in China. China has been accused of placing Uyghurs under surveillance, sending them to detention camps, forcing sterilization and abortion and suppressing religious practices by banning men from keeping long beards and fasting during Ramadan, among others

US-China relations are further tensed because of the trade war and tug-of-war over Taiwan. China has been banning Hollywood movies from its market. The Covid-19 pandemic has further deepened the rift between US and China. But despite the pandemic, China emerged as the world’s biggest box office in 2021. China’s local film industry has boomed decreasing the market’s reliance on Hollywood.

 

[1] How China Is Taking Control of Hollywood, The Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/asia/heritage-explains/how-china-taking-control-hollywood#:~:text=The%20Chinese%20are%20financing%20some,way%20into%20major%20American%20blockbusters.



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