China's airing of 'V for Vendetta' stuns viewers
By | Associated Press
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Associated Press/Richard Drew, File - FILE - In this Oct. 21, 2011 file photo, masks, including "V for Vendetta," left, are displayed at a Ricky's Halloween store in New York. Television audiences across China
BEIJING (AP) — Television
audiences across China watched an anarchist antihero rebel
against a totalitarian government and persuade the people to rule themselves.
Soon the Internet was crackling with quotes of "V for Vendetta's" famous line: "People
should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their
people."
The airing of the movie Friday night on
China Central
Television stunned viewers and raised hopes that China is loosening
censorship.
"V for Vendetta" never appeared in Chinese theaters, but it is unclear
whether it was ever banned. An article on the Communist Party's People's Daily
website says it was previously prohibited from broadcast, but the spokesman for
the agency that approves movies said he was not aware of any ban.
Some commentators and bloggers think the
broadcast could be CCTV producers pushing the envelope of
censorship, or another sign that the ruling Communist Party's newly installed leader, Xi
Jinping, is serious about reform.
"Oh God, CCTV unexpectedly put out 'V for
Vendetta.' I had always believed that film was banned in China!" media
commentator Shen Chen wrote on the popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo service, where he has over
350,000 followers.
Zhang Ming, a supervisor at a real estate company, asked on Weibo: "For the
first time CCTV-6 aired 'V for Vendetta,' what to think, is the reform being
deepened?"
The 2005 movie, based on a comic book, is set in an imagined future Britain
with a fascist government. The protagonist wears a mask of Guy Fawkes, the
17th-century English rebel who tried to blow up Parliament. The mask has become
a revolutionary symbol for young protesters in mostly Western countries, and it
also has a cult-like status in China as pirated DVDs are widely available. Some
people have used the image of the mask as their profile pictures on Chinese
social media sites.
Beijing-based rights activist Hu Jia wrote on Twitter, which is not
accessible to most Chinese because of government Internet controls: "This great
film couldn't be any more appropriate for our current situation. Dictators,
prisons, secret police, media control, riots, getting rid of 'heretics' ...
fear, evasion, challenging lies, overcoming fear, resistance, overthrowing
tyranny ... China's dictators and its citizens also have this relationship."
China's authoritarian government strictly
controls print media, television and radio. Censors also monitor social media
sites including Weibo. Programs have to be approved by the State Administration of
Radio, Film and
Television, but people with knowledge of the industry say CCTV, the only
company with a nationwide broadcast license, is entitled to make its own
censorship decisions when showing a foreign movie.
"It is already broadcast. It is no big deal," said a woman who answered the
phone at movie channel CCTV-6. "We also didn't anticipate such a big
reaction."
The woman, who only gave her surname, Yang,
said she would pass on questions to her supervisor, which weren't answered.
The spokesman for the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said
he had noticed the online reaction to the broadcast. "I've not heard of any ban
on this movie," Wu Baoan said Thursday.
The film is available on video-on-demand platforms in China, where movie
content also needs to be approved by authorities.
A political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who used to
work for CCTV said the film might have approval, or it could have been CCTV's
own decision to broadcast it.
"Every media outlet knows there is a ceiling above their head," said Liu
Shanying. "Sometimes we will work under the ceiling and avoid touching it. But
sometimes we have a few brave ones who want to reach that ceiling and even
express their discontent over the censor system.
"It is very possible that CCTV decided by itself" to broadcast the film, Liu
said. If so, he added, it would have been "due to a gut feeling that China's
film censorship will be loosened or reformed."
"V for Vendetta" was released in the United States in 2005 and around the
world in 2006. China has a yearly quota on the numbers of foreign movies that
can be imported on a revenue share basis, making it tough to get distribution
approval. Other movies that failed to reach Chinese screens in 2006 include
"Brokeback Mountain" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." Chinese
moviegoers that year were able to see "Mission: Impossible III" with Tom Cruise
and "The Painted Veil," which was filmed in China and set in a Chinese
village.
Warner Brothers, which produced and distributed "V for Vendetta," declined to
comment.
China doesn't have a classification system, so all movies shown at its
cinemas are open to adults and children of any age. A filmmaker and Beijing Film
Academy professor, Xie Fei, published an open letter on Sina Weibo on Saturday
calling for authorities to replace the movie censorship system that dates from
the 1950s with a ratings system.
The airing of "V for Vendetta" raised some hopes about possible changes under
Xi, who was publicly named China's new leader last month. He has already
announced a trimmed-down style of leadership, calling on officials to reduce
waste and unnecessary meetings and pomp. His reforms are aimed at pleasing a
public long frustrated by local corruption.
State media say they have reduced reports
on officials' trips as part of this drive. The official Xinhua News Agency
warned this week that media outlets should "learn to play professionally in
today's information age as an increasingly picky audience is constantly" putting
them under scrutiny.
An American business consultant and author
with high-level Chinese contacts said there is no less commitment to one-party
rule in China, so any media reforms will only go so far.
"You can't have a totally free media as we
would have in the West and still maintain the integrity of a one-party system,"
said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who wrote the book "How China's Leaders Think." He
said he thinks restrictions are being eased, "but it has to be limited."
The new leadership has to tread carefully,
Kuhn said, because in the age of the Internet, talk about reforms won't be
forgotten.
"High expectations, if they are not
fulfilled, will create a worse situation," he said.
___
AP researchers Flora Ji and Henry Hou
contributed to this report.
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