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    The Big [Censored] Theory

    (pudding.cool)
    1444 points feross | 13 comments | 29 Aug 22 17:34 UTC | HN request time: 1.054s | source | bottom
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    Animats ◴[29 Aug 22 23:04 UTC] No.32644673[source]▶
    What's more striking is what comes out of China's domestic entertainment industry. There are far too many historical costume dramas. Those aren't as heavily censored as modern ones. More modern content looks like it was censored in accordance with the US Television Code of the 1950s. ("The code prohibited the use of profanity, the negative portrayal of family life, irreverence for God and religion, illicit sex, drunkenness and biochemical addiction, presentation of cruelty, detailed techniques of crime, the use of horror for its own sake, and the negative portrayal of law enforcement officials, among others.")[1] That's close to China's list. China also censors political subjects, to the point that nobody dares get near them in film or TV.

    The quality is improving, though. A decade ago, there was "Sky Fighters", which is China's version of "Top Gun". That was produced by a film unit of the People's Liberation Army, and it's as heavy-handed as you might expect.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Practices_for_Televisi...

    replies(2): >>32644887 #>>32655674 #
    1. neither_color ◴[29 Aug 22 23:36 UTC] No.32644887[source]▶
    What's interesting is in the US that kind of censorship is attributed to the most mainstream religion but China is officially atheist and does the same. Whenever people tell me that it's only one religion standing in the way of equal rights for disadvantaged groups I remind them that there's an atheist superpower that's even less permissive except for on reproductive issues(although, in their case they do regulate it heavily, only in the other direction with limits on the amount of children you can have and forced terminations in the past).
    replies(4): >>32644984 #>>32645299 #>>32645352 #>>32645419 #
    2. no_where ◴[29 Aug 22 23:48 UTC] No.32644984[source]▶
    Also that the self imposed censorship in America was a response by the studios to their customers. Where was Chinese government is furthering its Communist briefs.
    replies(1): >>32645431 #
    3. shusaku ◴[30 Aug 22 00:28 UTC] No.32645299[source]▶
    A lot of people in the west (especially the US) are raised with the Sunday school idea that religion is something you choose after an objective weighing of ideas. The reality is that both China and the US have engrained cultural values which lead to these regulations. Those cultural values sometimes manifest as religious practice, but there is no hard distinction.
    replies(1): >>32645682 #
    4. delecti ◴[30 Aug 22 00:37 UTC] No.32645352[source]▶
    There's definitely a tendency to oversimplify authoritarians by criticizing them for other aspects. American right-wing authoritarians are bad because they're authoritarian, but get criticized for the Evangelical tone through which they enforce it. Likewise with Chinese authoritarians getting criticized for being communist while they do authoritarianism, rather than for the authoritarianism itself.
    replies(2): >>32645424 #>>32647082 #
    5. kelnos ◴[30 Aug 22 00:48 UTC] No.32645419[source]▶
    Any people in power will find justifications for asserting control over others.

    Personally I would prefer someone coming out and being (mostly) honest about why they're trying to control others, not the religious "we're saving your soul!" nonsense.

    6. kelnos ◴[30 Aug 22 00:49 UTC] No.32645424[source]▶
    That's a fantastic point that I think many people miss. And others are well aware of it, but try to deflect attention from the authoritarian bits by focusing on the other bits.
    7. Animats ◴[30 Aug 22 00:50 UTC] No.32645431[source]▶
    China's government seems to be more concerned about containing criticism of the current Chinese government than Communist ideology. It's not like the Maoist period. The Economist has a good story about that this week.[1] Some militant Communists are now in opposition to the Xi regime.[2] The current regime is more authoritarian than Communist. Which is what usually happens when you get a Supreme Leader for Life.

    [1] https://www.economist.com/china/2022/08/25/chinas-communist-...

    [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...

    replies(1): >>32645931 #
    8. thrown_22 ◴[30 Aug 22 01:27 UTC] No.32645682[source]▶
    The current discussion around 'harm' from AI generated images is the most hilarious example of a cultural more trying to find a justification for its existence after it is no longer applicable.

    Will no one think of the pixels being exploited?

    The older I get the more I realize that culture is what keeps us back. The Romans didn't invent steam engines not because they didn't want them but because they couldn't imagine a world where you wouldn't need slaves. The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press.

    Currently there is no society which is friendly to digital information. The first one which is will overtake everyone else in the same way that industrialization let the west overtake everyone else.

    replies(1): >>32647992 #
    9. no_where ◴[30 Aug 22 02:19 UTC] No.32645931{3}[source]▶
    Authoritarianism does not preclude communism. Likewise, their model more resembles fascism with all facets of life serving the government's ends. Which is the reason for my classification of it as Communist as fascism is a mere variant of communism. The fact that some disaffected communists disagree with Xi is quite common as Communists often disagree.
    replies(1): >>32655713 #
    10. somenameforme ◴[30 Aug 22 05:58 UTC] No.32647082[source]▶
    There's a very specific reason for this that can be illustrated quite easily:

    The current Wiki page on authoritarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

    The same page, but from 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Authoritarianism&...

    The Wiki 'definition' of authoritarianism has shifted quite radically in recent years. There's a line in the older page, completely scrubbed at some point, that's quite relevant: "Democracies rarely exhibit much authoritarian behavior except in transition to or from authoritarian states. Many (if not most) citizens of authoritarian states do not perceive their state as authoritarian until late in its development."

    Recent history (that extends beyond just the past 2 years) has emphasized that the vast majority of people are perfectly fine, if not enthusiastic, about authoritarianism when they share the values of said authority. This makes it near impossible to criticize authoritarianism, in and of itself, because it trends towards immediate hypocrisy. So instead people criticize a system of values they disagree with, while using authoritarianism as a convenient slur to make the critique sound more noble and meaningful than a simple value disagreement would.

    The same thing has happened to the Wiki page. The older page emphasizes quite clearly that the West has long since entered into the world of authoritarianism, but we don't want to imagine this could ever happen. So instead we've redefined the word in an effort to focus largely on the differences between the United States and "the bad guys."

    11. seszett ◴[30 Aug 22 08:29 UTC] No.32647992{3}[source]▶
    > The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press.

    It's a little bit off-topic, but you have to live in a very different world to believe that, as the Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian church still today.

    The only religion that is larger than it, not by an extremely large margin, is Islam (not sure if you split Islam in its different branches).

    The reality is that after a short initial resistance, the Catholic Church quickly turned around and embraced printing. I would argue that the Catholic Church is probably one of the most agile among the main organised religions and adapts rather well to changes. It pains me to say that, but it's clearly not going to die anytime soon.

    replies(1): >>32648927 #
    12. thrown_22 ◴[30 Aug 22 11:15 UTC] No.32648927{4}[source]▶
    You have to be completely ignorant of the history of the Catholic Church to think that today's version has anything on the Church of 1500AD.

    https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/07/papal-overl...

    One of the more colorful moments, when the Pope owned England.

    What we have left is the losers of a rear guard action which has been going on for 400 years.

    13. int_19h ◴[30 Aug 22 21:58 UTC] No.32655713{4}[source]▶
    I would agree that modern China is basically fascist, but fascism is not a "mere variant of communism" in any sense. The key tenet of communism is common ownership of capital; in the authoritarian and totalitarian varieties, this is implemented as ownership by the state that represents "dictatorship of the proletariat". The fascist economic system is completely different.