Sex and Violence: Double Standards for China’s News and Entertainment Industries

Sex and Violence: Double Standards for China’s News and Entertainment Industries
Jun 17, 2013 By Owain Lloyd-Williams , eChinacities.com

It can be said that China is a goldmine of contradictions and double standards, examples of which are seemingly scattered throughout every level of society. Such are China’s discrepancies, that countless others have often mused upon the insatiably unpredictable nature of what can and cannot be done here. In a previous article I discussed how China’s censors decide which foreign musicians are allowed to play in the Mainland.  This time around, we look at the double standards with sex and violence in China’s news and entertainment industries.

When discussing sex, we all know that pornography is officially banned in China, and despite being able to pick up a few dodgy DVDs at your local black market, China’s censors generally come down pretty hard on the availability and distribution of porn. However, a quick glance of pretty much any popular Chinese news website and you’ll see countless stories covering topics involving prostitutes, nudity, and sex scandals—all featuring revealing (albeit airbrushed) photos. Equally difficult, is trying to decode the logic behind what amount of violence is considered acceptable to the Chinese censors. As with sexual content, you’ll often encounter incredibly graphic, uncensored depictions of crime scenes or fatal car accidents in mainstream news reports, likely leading you to believe that pretty much anything violent is considered acceptable here.  By contrast, you’ll also hear about incidents such as the removal of stylized violence, reduction of blood splatter and darkening of blood in foreign movies like Django Unchained. So where does censorship fit into all of this? Are there really any clear guidelines to what can and can’t be shown or are we just staring yet another indecipherable China contradiction in the face?  

It’s fine if it’s in the name of nationalism


Well, that’s subtle. Photos: Chinasmack, Chinasmack

This year saw several clips of over-the-top violence go viral on various Chinese internet platforms. These hyper-violent scenes were, surprise surprise, all featured in different anti-Japanese war drama films, or “抗日片” as they’re known in China. After being criticized online, the clips of cartoonish violence (which would even give Quentin Tarantino a run for his money) were eventually denounced by state media. A CCTV news report on April 10 was particularly critical of a scene where a Japanese soldier was sliced cleanly in half by a sword in one show and a scene from a different program where a woman was seen kung-fu-ing a group of 30+ Japanese soldiers to death as they attempted to rape her. CCTV stated that these dumbed-down shows were making “entertainment out of suffering”. Perhaps because they didn’t know how they could top a person getting sliced in half, the producers of a separate program opted to go the “sex sells” route, showing a naked woman on screen being saluted by a group of Red Army soldiers instead. This was particularly surprising, as nudity and sex in general are things that you never see on Chinese television (One typical joke between young Chinese being that in one scene you’ll see a couple kissing, then the screen fades to black and the next thing you see is that the woman is pregnant).

The anti-Japanese war dramas are a huge industry in China. Reportedly, there are as many as 48 separate production crews working on them each year, employing approximately 300,000 extras (who mostly play the part of dying Japanese soldiers no less). In lieu of the profit to be made from these shows, perhaps China’s networks are keen to milk them for all they’ve got, and if that means throwing in a few naked bodies and going overboard with the violence in order to gain extra ratings, then perhaps they’re willing to do so. But what does that say about China’s censors? Is the breakthrough of sex and violence onto television programs broadcasted nationwide a sign that they’re willing to let up a bit for potential financial gain? While this likely plays some part in the decision-making process, it certainly feels like China’s censors are primarily allowing the use of such sex and violence in these anti-Japanese war dramas as a means to disseminate anti-Japanese sentiment across the country. Political developments with the on-going Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute saw a huge surge of protests in September 2012, and with Sino-Japanese relations now looking murkier than they’ve been for a while, the push for Chinese nationalism seems to be going into overdrive.  

It’s all in the news

Tune in to any news channel in China and you’re bound to see a rosy-colored collage of happy people reaping the benefits of China’s new wealth or some report on construction and infrastructure improvement that break records for the use of the words “development” and “happiness” in a single news report. And even though China’s news channels no longer shy away from coverage of domestic disasters or corruption scandals that may have unraveled themselves that day, the often passive depiction of such potentially juicy news stories quickly makes you realize it’s still the same old “everything’s fine” drill shown by the stone-faced presenters.

However as we all know from China’s often fiery-tongued netizens, the internet is where the country really comes to life in depicting and exposing fascinating news stories. Visually, this often manifests itself in graphic, gruesome and sexy ways. Log on to any of China’s major online news publications such as Ifeng, China News, People, and even ultra-nationalist site Global Times, and you’ll probably see revealing pictures of semi-naked women scattered about the main pages. For example, the recent Hainan sex party scandal started with uncensored explicit photos finding their way onto a user’s Weibo page, and then before you knew it, they were all over the Chinese online news sphere (albeit censored). On the grotesque side, recent pictorial reports of the Ya’an earthquake saw pretty graphic depictions of the quake victims, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve inadvertently stumbled upon nasty shots of bloody bodies at traffic accidents or crime scenes. Is China leaning away from this kind of censorship in favor of a more tabloid-esque approach to online news that relies on shock factor to garner more attention and greater profits?

Another interesting scenario that I’ve come across on a number of occasions is the peculiar behavior of China’s top search engine, Baidu. Being the go-to search engine for most Chinese and millions of others (the site ranked 5th overall in the Alexa internet rankings in October 2012), one would expect that it’d be subject to some pretty heavy censorship by the authorities for sexual and violent content. However, I’ve found that by typing often harmless, non-sexual or violence-related words into the image search in both English and Chinese, I’m often swamped with a random smattering soft porn images in my search results. Recent attempts to find pictures related to the words “happy”, “spitting”, “rice” and even “Baidu” have proven to return some interesting results (take a look for yourselves), and it made me wonder whether China’s censors, who are known to be swift and ruthless when it comes to blocking such content, aren’t as on the pulse as they seem to be.

Censorship gets censored

In spite of all this, I’d like to reiterate that China’s censors are, for the most part, incredibly unpredictable and amuck with contradictions. Of course, there are certain taboo topics that are always a big no no in the eyes of China’s censors, and at the risk being censored myself, I won’t bother to list them here. Incidentally, a somewhat ironic and humorous development in the battle over censorship occurred recently when Feng Xiaogang, considered “China’s Spielberg”, actually had the word “censorship” censored during his acceptance speech for winning the Director of the Year award from the China Film Director’s Guild on April 12. Feng was referring to China’s censors being one of the most frustrating aspects of being a director in China, and the bleeping out of the very word itself perhaps tells us all we need to know about China being angst-ridden when faced with accusations about its censorship. Remember – according to China, Facebook is blocked in “North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and another country”.
 

Related links
Relaxing or Restricting? China’s Music Censors Confuse Yet Again
Understanding Weibo: The Many Faces of “China’s Twitter”
Sanya Sex Party and “Socialite Girls”: Bad for China’s Modeling Industry

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Keywords: sex and violence

2 Comments

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MichaelTESOL

hmmmmh

Jun 22, 2013 19:50 Report Abuse

carlstar

Totally true Owain but don't we all love living in 'another country'.......... Porn is good and all but not great when searching for something else, that is why Baidu is only of use if you don't have a vpn........... As a kid we used to love the Nazi's because they had the best gear, guns, tanks and planes etc. My granddad fought against them but never said a discouraging word about the Germans and even explained to me why the Nazi stick grenade was so good and how to use it effectively. I also learnt at a very early age that it was WWII, you know, pretty much the whole world except for maybe South America. Never had I heard the term "anti(nation)" war until coming to China. Is that because China can't forgive or is it that China just holds grudges for generations? Is China not part of the world?

Jun 17, 2013 19:50 Report Abuse