By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
During the filming of the 1939 movie Jesse James,
a stuntman and his horse went over a cliff and fell 70 feet into a river. The
stuntman was fine; the horse died. This incident is what gave rise to that line
at the end of many movies: “No animals were harmed in the making of this film.”
The American Humane Association, which trademarked that saying, worked out a deal
with the Screen Actors Guild and the precursor to the Motion Picture
Association of America in which filmmakers would vouch that animals were
well-treated in movies.
Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) thinks this
might be a good model for how the U.S. can push back against China’s global
influence.
In the last decade or so, Hollywood has acquiesced to
countless demands from China. In the (horrible) 2012 remake of the movie Red
Dawn, the plan was to depict American resistance to a Chinese invasion. (In
the original it was a Soviet invasion.) After the filming was finished, MGM
caved to pressure from China and re-edited the film to turn the invaders into
North Koreans for fear of losing access to the Chinese market.
If that were the only example, one might cut the
then-cash-strapped studio some slack. But Hollywood does this all the time.
The 2016 film Dr. Strange changed a character from
a Tibetan monk to a Celtic woman played by Tilda Swinton. Brad Pitt was banned
from China for several years because he starred in Seven Years in Tibet
(as were the director and a co-star). Richard Gere’s career took a hit because
of his outspoken support for Tibet. Studios often won’t cast him for fear of
angering the Chinese Communist Party, which has been inflicting cultural
genocide on Tibet for decades. For the upcoming Top Gun sequel, China is
assumed to have forced the studio to change Tom Cruise’s flight jacket so that
the Taiwan flag no longer appears. (Our ally is not a sovereign country,
according to Beijing.)
It would be wrong and unworkable to ban movie studios
from kowtowing to Chinese demands. It’s called show business, not show
politics. China is on course to become the biggest single market for film and
television, and while it may be cowardly and hypocritical for an industry that
wears its idealism on its sleeve to placate a nation that bans free expression
and is hauling Uighurs into concentration camps, we shouldn’t follow suit by
restricting free expression here at home.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t impose a little
truth-in-labeling on the industry. That’s Gallagher’s idea (which he proposed
on a recent episode of my podcast, The Remnant). Congress should require
American studios to disclose whether a film has been altered in any way to meet
the approval of China’s censorious regime. You know how TV networks inform
viewers that a film has been altered for television? Why not notify viewers if
a film has been changed to conform with Chinese propaganda?
At the beginning or end of a movie, American audiences
would have to be informed: “This film has been altered to fit the demands of
the Chinese Communist Party.” Obviously, the Chinese wouldn’t allow that
disclaimer in their theaters, but at least Americans would know. Hopefully that
would apply a little democratic counterpressure to China’s undemocratic
pressure.
Gallagher also suggests that American social-media
platforms be required to ban officials from nations that ban free speech. Why
should authoritarian propagandists be afforded privileges that they won’t grant
their own people?
No one wants a war with China. But we already live in a
world where China is exerting itself on America. Right now, we impose little to
no costs on them to do so, in part because we live in a free country where
businesses, including Hollywood studios, are largely free to cut whatever deals
fit their own bottom lines. Curtailing such mercenary practices without
mimicking China’s command-and-control tactics is difficult. Forcing full
disclosure on businesses that play such games — perhaps including those that
allow their intellectual property to be stolen in order to maintain access to
the Chinese market — strikes me as a brilliant way to counter the trend.
Let American consumers know the full truth. If they don’t
care, the studios can carry on. If they do care, make filmmakers pay the price
for their pursuit of profit over principle — not by being dragged off in the
middle of the night, but at the box office.
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