Opinion: China's Celebrity Crackdown Won't Help Its Soft Power
17 replies, posted
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-14/china-s-celebrity-crackdown-won-t-help-its-soft-power
By late spring, Fan Bingbing, China’s most popular actress, had become a cultural juggernaut. She had 63 million followers on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social network, and high-profile endorsement deals with some of the world’s most prominent luxury brands. Besides roles in major Chinese and Hollywood films, she’d just enjoyed a prestigious turn as a juror at the Cannes Film Festival. If Anne Hathaway and the Kardashians merged, they would still have fallen short of Fan’s ubiquitous stardom.That’s all been snuffed out now, thanks in part to a tax-evasion scandal and, more importantly, a government campaign to slash the influence of China’s celebrities. As Bloomberg News reported this week, Fan hasn’t been seen in public since early June. Beyond the star’s personal fate, her disappearance raises serious questions about whether China can create an entertainment industry that challenges Hollywood.
It's interesting (and rather horrifying) that China create these celebrities when they embraced certain aspects of capitalism, but are now trying to strangle them as they become more popular and influential than China's leaders.
china is a very weird amalgamate of the worst parts of communism and capitalism
This is why China will never be able to challenge the west when it comes to entertainment.
People want stories that ring true, not bland, government approved propaganda.
It's easy to be successful domestically if it's a closed shop. Hollywood, European, Japanese, and Korean movies and TV all have followings amongst each other, but what was the last Chinese movie or show to really gain traction outside China? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
I might be a bit biased, since my field is animation and that's mostly what I've kept up with, and China never really cracked that nut in a meaningful way.
There was some big award-winning director who made a speech about how the government ruins his movies.
China's biggest enemy is that its attempting to speed run the rise and fall of a nation.
And they're succeeding.
Or the sniepr movie that was literally the sniper movie shown in inglorious bastards.
The worse part is, if/when China crashes, it's going to bring down the whole planet.
It'll be like 2008 but far worse.
Also worth noting that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon starred Chow Yun-Fat, someone who oppenly supports the Hong Kong independence movement and when the mainland Chinese government told him he would get a smaller salary if he openly supported such a movement his response to the public was "so what?".
Inlorious basterds was literally the sniper movie from inglorious basterds
Yeah, if hating Nazis was blind nationalism.
i think the movie went over your head lol
I don't think China cares about challenging the West with its domestic output. As China's economy matures the CCP is going to be able to exert greater control over Hollywood by gatekeeping their massive market.
China is a 3rd world government playing with 1st world resources and wants to be taken seriously internationally
Hollywood already gatekeeps its shit behind 'known viewer formulas' and shit.
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