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The Big [Censored] Theory

(pudding.cool)
1444 points feross | 2 comments | 29 Aug 22 17:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.547s | source
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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...

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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).
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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.
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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.

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1. seszett ◴[30 Aug 22 08:29 UTC] No.32647992[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.

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2. thrown_22 ◴[30 Aug 22 11:15 UTC] No.32648927[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.