As China continues its crackdown on dissidents and journalists and lawyers, it appears to be slipping back into its old habits from the cultural revolution. Chinese censors have issued new regulations banning all depictions of gay people on television. Other depictions banned as “vulgar, immoral and unhealthy content include content showing extramarital affairs, one night stands and underage relationships as illegal on screen. The new censorship regulation also extends to “smoking, drinking, adultery, sexually suggestive clothing, even reincarnation.”
Of course, none of this seriously matters since the chief censor of China announced recently that there is no censorship in China . . . and he should, after all, know. He is the chief censor.
The problem of course with authoritarian rule is that truly stupid laws tend not to be vetted or challenged before they are promulgated. In the case of the Soviet five year plans, the result was the devastation of the economy and farming. The absence of critics and counter-political forces allows moronic ideas to be promulgated and replicated.
History has shown that censoring images and ideas are largely fruitless exercises. We experimented with such regulations in this country, both governmental and self-imposed movie standards. They were widely ridiculed and circumvented. All that they did was give boosts to politicians who sought to impose their moral strictures upon everyone else in society. The market ultimately crushed such standards.
China is filled with tech-savvy, modern people who are not going to accept the Chinese version of Gene Autry films as the mainstay of Chinese cinema. Ironically, this reactionary move comes at a time when Chinese cinema is blossoming into a global leader. That may be precisely the problem for the regime. Chinese movie sales are booming and that clearly makes the regime uneasy. The government wants more control over images and content. It is not likely to maintain strict limits on the Internet and news while allowing “counter-revolutionary” images to reach the public in movie theaters.
The new regulations state that “No television drama shall show abnormal sexual relationships and behaviours, such as incest, same-sex relationships, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual violence, and so on.”
It is the latest reactionary measure in the dark legacy of Xi Jinping. While corruption and abuse continue to flourish under his rule, the Party has always maintained a puritanical image. For example, in December 2014, it stopped the popular TV show, The Empress of China, from being broadcast because the actors showed too much cleavage. It is also decidedly homophobic — maintaining the position that homosexuality is a “psychological disorder” in textbooks.
Of course, as the regime allows greater economic and cultural gaps to form between the party and the public, it may only be hastening its own eventual demise. For the moment however it is most worry about the image of a chain smoking, scantily dressed, alcohol drinking gay man in a movie clip.
Source: Guardian
@Steve G
I am very fortunate about the money stuff. Not rich, and can’t just do whatever I want, but I don’t have to worry about the necessities because of hardworking and miserly ancestors. Fabia said the smartest people she was ever around were in law school, but that being said, she was still shocked at how many of them were unable to think new thoughts. She says the history of the law should be a bigger part of law school, because without that, you tend to lose perspective on things. The whole 10 Commandments in the courthouse thing she says would have never made it to a court if lawyers properly understood the role of religions in forming the artificial legal constructs that first allowed humans to live together in large groups.
She has several of those Gryphon books on famous trials, that I like to read, and historical legal books like ancient Greek trials. Which, the subject matter of those is still common, today, She says the law is everywhere if you know how to look for it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@SteveG
Fabia says the same thing, about how it is hard to make a good living in law. You can bill 10 hours at $150 per hour until you are blue in the face, but if the rent is due, and they can only cough up $500, you take it. Unlike doctors, whose clients have third party payers, attorneys have to live in the real world.
As far as school, I already write briefs and research for her. I pound out Complaints, and Responses, and dig out all the elements of causes of action. Which by the way, the COA’s are a great resource. West puts them out. She can usually just point me in the right direction and I can read and learn enough to handle it. I am not being vain, but she is probably right that I could do it pretty easily,
I am thinking about it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Girl Reporter, that’s accurate about getting clients to pay and making money. It’s as much a war with one’s client sometimes as it is with the opposing party and his or her pugnacious attorney.
You have to remember that if you’re not in the top 10 percent of your class, you’ll have a hard time finding work other than self-employment. So unless you think you’re in that category of students (I wasn’t competitive in law school, having attended 10 years after getting my undergraduate degree), or you have some fund source to keep you out of debt once you graduate, give serious thought to the pros and cons.
That said, you’ll be amazed with the knowledge gained in history, legal theory and policymaking. If you’re anything like I was, you’ll be saying to yourself a lot: “Oh, that’s what that means” or “that’s what they meant by that.”
Hat’s off.
@Stevegroen
I mostly have it on in the background, while I work crosswords and jumbles, or read, or play guitar, or surf the net. I am fortunate enough to not have to work, even though I do have several part time jobs doing things I enjoy. Like helping my BFF Fabia Sheen, Esq., an attorney, helping my mother in her business, and helping several self-employed friends (mostly my Mom’s friends) with legal and accounting problems.
One day, I need to get off my rump and go to law school. Fabia says it would be a snap for me. I will be 32 this year, sooo maybe I need to do that. Who knows? I am happy, sooo if it ain’t broke. . .
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Girl Reporter, I’d recommend law school to anyone. The education you’ll receive if you want to learn is lasting. Nearly anything you want to learn which isn’t taught in business school or medical school you can get in law school. What I don’t recommend is the practice of law. The problem is it’s a boring paper shuffle for most, and far and away the majority of attorneys are unfortunately not as principled and theoretically involved with the law as Prof. Turley, of whom I’m a big fan. It’s like the population in general – a few very good ones and as for the rest, as a friend says, “I have high hopes and low expectations.”
As for TV censorship, I think that’s a parental right, but for adult viewers, it’s BS from the corporate dogs trying to keep their FCC licenses as opposed to fighting censorship.
@stevegroen
What is “free speechy” about showing two homos in the back alley giving blow jobs? Because this was on Shades of Blue (NBC) a few weeks ago, and why I quit watching the series. Somehow America did really good for most of before this kind propaganda started getting promulgated.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Girl Reporter, why would an intelligent person like you be watching television?
Freedom of speech is our most valuable right of the few we have, and it has to be protected at any cost it seems to me.
“abnormal sexual relationships and behaviours, such as incest, same-sex relationships, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual violence, and so on.”
In short – What happens in America stays in America – – –
We must be cautious about the erosion of our own individual rights, and the weakening of the balance of power. This is why Professor Turley has been so active in protecting the country from the rise of an uber Presidency which. All those Obama supporters who have criticized Prof Turley for his posts on the matter will rue the day they supported this increase in power if Trump ever assumes the mantle.
As for China, it has bigger problems than censorship, few individual rights, high suicide rate via pesticide overdose among rural women, and an unaccountable government that poisons its own country with pollution. Because of its One Child Law, females were selectively aborted at a very high rate, because girls are viewed as less important than boys. The entirely predictable result is that their country does not have enough women. Of course now they want to crack down on pornography and titillating images. This was the result of a too powerful government’s social engineering exercise. Although it is now illegal for a doctor to inform a pregnant mother of the sex of a baby (because clearly more control is the answer), there are back door ultrasound operators all around the country. Since abortion is legal until the 9th month, it’s still easy to find out the sex of the baby illegally, and get a legal abortion up until the baby is actually being born. Now there is a booming trade in kidnapped baby girls to be sold as future wives for these sons. Since social instability and crime are predicted as this male population imbalance grows, the government has become so desperate it is actually paying parents who have girls. Since the One Child rule continues, however, China still preferentially adopts out girls to foreigners because couples want a chance to have another child, which could be a boy.
Of course, with its limited land, China ran out of room for its population. Eventually, if the trend of population growth continues, the US will finally reach its own limit, with its catastrophic environmental and resource limits. I wonder how we will respond.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-too-many-men/
Vidal was correct about having only one political party; the big government, progressive party and it has a left and right wing.
The US govt, and American society is also moving in this direction.
Free speech zones, language micromanagement, hyper vigilance in what we say and do.
Most recently the FBI put out a directive to watch high school students for “radicalization”.
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/fbi-has-new-plan-spy-high-school-students-across-country
Chinese version of Sharia law…hmmm…not that surprising.
“The absence of critics and counter-political forces allows moronic ideas to be promulgated and replicated.”
This doesn’t sound all too different from our governmental and public debate about everything here in the US where only a tiny spectrum of thought and viewpoints are ever allowed on our mass media in any meaningful way. In our society, acceptable opinion stretches only from very slightly left of center to the far right. This limited spectrum of voices led Gore Vidal to observe that America had but one political party with two right wings. While our system obviously is preferable to the Chinese heavy hand we would do well to take a critical look at our self imposed system of limited acceptable thinking.
@bam bam
Texas banned sodomy until Lawrence v. Texas. It also had adultery on the books until no-fault divorce, then they dropped adultery as one of the probable ways to determine a legal divorce. It also is very conservative with a lot of people with morals, defined by Christianity, who deem gay people as an anathema to life itself.
Still interesting though. It makes me wonder if China’s going to soar with all the ban going on in its place. In fact, there’s this unknown report coming out from somewhere that China’s starting to become more Christianized with more Chinese men taking up arms for Christ; atheism would fast become a minority sometime soon.
Even if we had the Religious Right here, China may have itself their very own secret Religious Right. If that’s the case, then China isn’t heading straight into a demise. It’s heading straight into a very “Cultural Revolution” of its own, run by Christians.
Didn’t Congress ban the advertising of cigarettes on television and radio in 1970? Hmmm?
We show the images of the smog on the streets of Beijing and other Chinese cities and also the dorks smoking cigarettes while wearing smog masks. But we do not criticize the dumb smokers. Not their smokers or our dumb smokers. Is “dumb smoker” a redundancy?
Why do we in our media go back to calling this place “Red China”? One reason is we want our citizens to feel OK about buying all of our tea and all of our goods from these Communists. It is not OK.
Good! The United States needs to go back to these standards, too. Monkey see, monkey do.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter