Answers to China and Hollywood

The release of Disney’s Mulan in mainland China has been riddled with controversy. The film was partly shot in Xinjiang, where China is accused of arbitrarily detaining Muslim Uighurs in ‘reeducation’ camps. More here and here. The lead actor, Liu Yifei has been criticised by protesters in Hong Kong for supporting the police on social media, leading to boycott calls. Mulan is the latest in a series of Hollywood products accused of pandering to China, even as it is poised to overtake North America as the world’s largest theatrical film market.

Answers

1) This 1997 film about an Austrian mountaineer was banned in China and its lead actor effectively shut out of the country until 2016, when he returned to promote his new release. Name the banned film and actor.

Seven Years in Tibet. Brad Pitt played the role of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, who was the Dalai Lama’s tutor in the years between World War II and the Chinese invasion in 1950. Harrer’s book Seven Years in Tibet was a bestseller in the 1950s and he died at the age of 93 in 2006.

2) Another 1997 film, this time directed by Martin Scorcese, was banned in China. Disney was the film’s distributor and faced retaliation, as China barred all Disney films and TV cartoon shows. A year later, Disney’s then CEO apologised to the Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji saying “We made a stupid mistake”. Disney returned to the Chinese market with an animated film in February 1999. Name both films

Kundun, a biopic charting the Dalai Lama’s life from 1937 to 1959 when he escaped to India. More about Disney’s apology here. Its comeback vehicle was the animated Mulan and among those enlisted in the company’s lobbying efforts was former U.S Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. But the ‘Americanised’ version of the folk tale left Chinese viewers cold.

3) The lead actor in Question 1 also played a big role in a 2019 Oscar nominated film whose theatrical release was blocked in China, amid a controversy over its portrayal of martial arts icon Bruce Lee. The director in this case refused to cut scenes or make changes

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood directed by Quentin Tarantino. Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee said her father was mockingly portrayed as ‘arrogant’ in the film. While China did not give an explanation, its refusal to allow the film is widely attributed to the Bruce Lee controversy.

4) This 1984 film is set in a town in the U.S. state of Colorado and features an invading force from the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua. For its remake released in 2012, the aggressors initially were Chinese. But after filming, the producers ended up digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols. Lines were altered and the antagonists now belonged to another country. Name the film and the new country. (Despite the changes, the film didn’t get a China release)

Red Dawn. Among those providing consulting advice was Alexander Haig, a former general who had been President Reagan’s first Secretary of State and subsequently a member of Red Dawn producer MGM-UA’s board of directors.

For the remake, North Korean antagonists replaced Chinese.

5) Why did Chinese censors in 2018 ban the release of Christopher Robin, a new film adaptation of AA Milne’s story about Winnie the Pooh? (Hint: politics/memes)

The ban on Christopher Robin followed a series of unflattering memes likening President Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

6) Last year DreamWorks’ animation film Abominable (while welcomed in China) was banned in Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia. Why? (Hint: Map)

Abominable had a map showing China’s ‘nine-dash line’—marking its claim over most of the South China Sea. Others with competing claims include Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

July 2023 update: Vietnam banned the film Barbie for depicting China's ‘nine-dash line’ claim.

7) 1987 saw the release of Film A, an Oscar winner which was given access to Beijing’s Forbidden City, and Film B by a renowned director, which was partly shot in Shanghai. Film A and B were the first two Western ventures filmed in China since the Communist revolution in 1949. Name A and B.  

A is Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor which went on to win nine Academy Awards

B is Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun.

8) The Japanese distributor for Film A in Question 7 planned to cut some newsreel footage from the film. The director opposed it and the resulting furore led to the footage being restored for Japanese viewers. What was the footage all about?

The newsreel scenes show Japanese soldiers killing Chinese and then dumping their bodies in a hole in Nanking in December 1937 after Japan invaded China. The massacre is known as the ‘Rape of Nanking’.

9) Born in Chinatown, Los Angeles, Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American to make it big in Hollywood though she was stuck with stereotyped roles. She was passed over for the lead role in an Oscar-winning 1937 film set in China, and was instead offered a secondary role of a courtesan, which she turned down. (The white actor who played the lead role got the Best Actress Oscar). Name the film.

The Good Earth based on the book by Pearl S. Buck. Luise Rainer won the Oscar for her performance. More about Anna May Wong here.

10) British author Sax Rohmer first introduced a villainous Chinese crime lord in a 1913 book at a time of racial animus described as the ‘Yellow Peril’. This spawned multiple books, films, TV shows and comics over decades featuring the character. One of the films in the 1930s resulted in a racism complaint by the Chinese embassy in Washington DC. As late as 2013, General Motors had to pull an ad for invoking this character in connection with China. Name the character.

Fu Manchu. More about the ‘Yellow Peril’ here. GM had to pull an ad in 2013 that called China ‘the land of Fu Manchu’.

To round up, here is PEN America’s report this year about self-censorship by Hollywood when it comes to China.