SPEAKING FREELY The naked truth about China's censors
By Chris Crook
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"I thought there would be some trouble, though not this bad. When I heard their
decision, I couldn't help a bitter smile. It was the same thing that happened
to me in the past, the same thing that many directors have experienced. I bet
even the official who made the announcement was bored." - Lou Ye [1]
For someone who has been banned from making movies in China
for five years, director Lou Ye doesn't seem too bothered. For a director whose
trademark is politically sensitive subjects (at least in mainland China), being
told off by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) is
something of an occupational hazard.
Ye was banned after Summer Palace appeared in the Cannes film festival
without Chinese government permission. Now, Weekend Lover, Suzhou River
and Summer Palace, all of which have the
career-killing combination of sensitive political topics and a hefty dose of
nudity, have earned the director the dubious moniker of the enfant terrible of
Chinese cinema.
In Summer Palace, described as the most controversial film to come out
of China for the past 50 years, Ye manages to shatter sexual and political
taboos of Chinese cinema. He weaves the political upheavals of 1989, both in
Berlin and Beijing, around a sexually explicit plot (which includes for the
first time in a Chinese film, full-frontal nudity of both sexes). Now, I know
that any French readers, raised on a diet of Betty Blue and the Emmanuelle
movies would drag deeply on a Gauloises, and give a slight shrug of bemusement,
but trust me, in China, this is a big deal.
Despite having his career stolen by the Chinese censor, Ye is remarkably
upbeat. As he told The Guardian, "The political system is more flexible, the
economy is growing fast and the relationship between people is more equal." He
firmly believes that things in China are better than they ever were.
Ye is adamant that his films are not political, but has a harder time trying to
explain why there is so much sex and nudity in the movie. He was quoted as
saying, "I don't understand why the authorities are so sensitive about [the
Tiananmen crackdown of] 1989. They shouldn't worry about it. The facts are out
there already. Analysis of those facts still requires a lot of work. But I'm
not trying to make a comment. This movie is just a love story set against that
background."
Ye is not alone in suffering the wrath of the Chinese censor. At the start of
the year, Li Fang's Lost in Beijing was edited, submitted, re-edited,
resubmitted. None of the adjustments to the story were good enough for SARFT,
and, even after 20 minutes of footage was cut, the film was still banned.
Subsequently, Fang was barred from making films in China for two years.
Shot in a realistic, documentary style, similar to that of Eric Zonka's
wonderful The Dream Life of Angels, Fang's Lost in Beijing follows
the stories of a masseuse, her abusive boss, her husband and her boss' wife.
The first half of the movie is very funny, in fact, almost farcical.
After her friend gets fired from the foot massage parlor, the protagonist, Liu,
takes her out to get drunk on their lunch hour. Liu then returns to have a
short nap in one of the massage rooms. Her boss discovers her and halfway
through having sex the two are caught by Liu's husband - a window cleaner who
happened to be cleaning the wrong window at the right time to catch his wife
and her boss on one of the beds.
The plot thickens when Liu falls pregnant and her boss makes a deal with the
couple to unofficially adopt the baby as his wife is unable to conceive. The
whole deal depends on who the father of the child is.
The apathy that the film promotes with constant visual bombardment of
unfinished apartment blocks and squalor, is unavoidable. The film grabs at the
throat and rams the emptiness of urban existence down it. Lost in Beijing
leaves the viewer with almost nothing, only the empty, dreadful assumption that
we're all going to die.
Surprisingly, these two Chinese filmmakers are both willing to edit their films
so that they can reach the public. Ye says that although he's receptive to
dialogue, negotiations with Chinese authorities have broken down and the
government isn't interested in giving him a second chance. As Ye told a
reporter, "I think the most fundamental reason is that they think movies are a
form of politics. If that was their opinion 10 years ago, I could fully
understand. But the reality today is not like that. In 2006, films are part of
the entertainment industry."
Fang made over 50 cuts and re-edits to Lost in Beijing in an attempt to
appease government regulators. Even then, after working with what the producer
feels was total compliance, the film was banned. The authorities believed that
the producers were deliberately selecting sensitive and controversial themes to
garner international accolades and promote their movies to lucrative Western
markets.
The "bleeding hearts and artists" of course will leap to the filmmakers'
defense, and champion Ye for deciding to oppose the ban and team up with a Hong
Kong writer to work on another movie. Fang and Ye have both repeatedly said
they have worked with SARFT to get distribution approval. After all, there's
little point in making a movie if no one goes to see it. Ye bristles about the
accusations that he's sensationalized the ban on on his film.
"I feel that Western critics don't fully understand this film. They ignore a
lot and focus only on Tiananmen and sex. But that is only a part of the story,"
he told The Guardian. "What is more important is what is going on inside the
characters. This is a journey of the soul of a female Chinese intellectual.
Such a trip could only happen here."
Ye continued: "I've never been antagonistic toward those official agencies.
I've been feeling my way along. Where are the lines?"
Whereas SARFT may well approve the script for Summer Palace, they can
then ban its distribution because of the sex and political overtones. But, if
the script's sex and politics were a problem, the film should have been
rejected at the script-approval stage, rather than wasting the time of an
entire film crew, actors and anyone associated with making the movie.
In contrast to the claims made by the filmmakers, the film was banned not only
because of the subject matter, but also because the film was technically below
exhibition standard. The Beijing News reported that "the picture was too fuzzy,
and the sound was too low". Embarrassment to the Chinese people and government
would result if anything less than a slick, well-produced movies should appear
in theaters around the world.
According to producer Nai An, "Lou Ye tried out some new artistic methods in
this film, but the committee of censors judged it as not being up to technical
standards. This struck a blow to the director, and he cannot accept this result
at present."
With Lost in Beijing, it's a little different. Chinese cinema is a tool
for exporting Chinese culture, and no one wants to promote a culture that
depicts casual rape, child-trafficking and rampant sexual acrobatics when the
Summer Olympic Games are going to be held in less than six months in Beijing.
The Hollywood Reporter was less than impressed with the movie, noting that
audiences didn't walk out of the movie because of the sex or degradation and
generally crappiness of life that is presented in the film, but because it was
actually pretty boring.
The bans of these two films, and the controversy they have generated, comes at
an unfortunate time for Chinese movie fans. In December, an unofficial halt on
the import and approval of American films came into effect. The ban was never
announced in writing, but many suspect it is China's reaction to the rather
vitriolic complaints from the already rabid intellectual "property rightists"
in the US. Although the ban doesn't seem to have originated from SARFT, Enchanted,
Bee Movie, Stardust and Beowulf have all been locked out
of Chinese theaters.
Things understandably came to a head following the comments of Susan Schwab, US
trade representative at the World Trade Organization, who remarked on China's
"inadequate protection of intellectual property rights". This was unfair
considering a Chinese court's decision on December 20 against Yahoo for
deep-linking to MP3's on its music search facility. The International
Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) applauded the ruling, with IFPI
chief executive officer John Kennedy saying, "The ruling against Yahoo China is
extremely significant in clarifying copyright rules for Internet music services
in China."
One of the problems with censorship in China is that there is no definitive
list of rules. For the Internet, there is no list of what sites are blocked and
what sites are acceptable. Websites are blocked and unblocked on an almost
ad-hoc basis. During my research into Internet blocking, courtesy of the Golden
Shield project, I came across an interesting theory which postulates that it is
that exact strategy that generates self-censorship in mainland China.
Occasionally, people are reminded that censorship is in place, but it's not
always enforced. By making examples of individuals who do get caught, a
reminder is sent that the government is watching.
While it's written in the constitution that Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of
speech and expression, there is an abundance of evidence that that is not the
case. It's true enough that other countries do censor films. My home, the
United Kingdom, has one of the oldest and most controversial movie censoring
bodies in the world. Countries where religion and politics intermingle also
stringently scrub media before the masses are allowed anywhere near it. The
problem is that the Chinese government treats everyone the same. They are so
accustomed to not providing explanations for the decisions they make that
everyone is left in the dark as to why things work the way they do.
In October, when a group of Dutch marathon runners gathered to run around what
had been promised as a tour of Beijing's best "modern and historical" sites,
they were actually given a tour of Beijing's wastelands. Some of the buildings
were so modern they hadn't been finished. The marathon date had been set a year
in advance with all the participants. After running through mile after mile of
highways and building sites, the runners only had one thing to say to the press
gathered at the finish line: "We won't be coming back."
The reason for the sudden changes in the marathon route? It was the
announcement, three weeks before the start of the race, of the biggest
political event in the country: the National Congress of the Chinese Communist
Party.
Note
1. As quoted in The Guardian, September 9, 2006.
After working in, and writing about the British film industry for nearly five
years, Chris Crook worked in China for a year, trying to balance writing
and English teaching. The writing won hands down.
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career-killing combination of sensitive political topics and a hefty dose of
nudity, have earned the director the dubious moniker of the enfant terrible of
Chinese cinema.
